By Barbara Loe Fisher
It’s been about six months since the Department of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Homeland Security followed the World Health Organization and declared a very scary pandemic influenza public health emergency in the United States.
Last spring we suddenly found ourselves watching You Tube videos of people being quarantined in hotels and detained on airplanes by HazMat teams. When we went to the grocery stores, we encountered fellow Americans wearing face masks. And every time we turned on the television, there were news reports about schools closing so desks and lockers could be scrubbed down.
The Worst Is Yet To Come?
And we watched CDC press conferences 5 warning us that the worst was surely yet to come because the H1N1 swine flu virus first identified outside a pig farm in Mexico had the potential to mutate and kill tens of thousands more Americans 6 than the 36,000 that CDC officials tell us die every year from seasonal influenza.
It was enough to make us very, very afraid.
No Liability for Vaccine Makers
It was enough to make Congress give drug companies more than a billion dollars of our taxes to quickly create H1N1 swine flu vaccines and then throw in another couple of billion dollars for health officials to deliver and aggressively promote vaccination in Sesame Street ads and on the internet and radio and TV. And while they were at it, Congress shielded everyone who has anything to do with making, promoting and giving swine flu vaccines from all liability in civil court whenever somebody gets hurt or dies after getting vaccinated.
It was enough to make us very, very afraid.
Health Worker Mandates & School Vaccination Programs
It was scary enough to make legislators in Massachusetts and other states talk about passing stronger laws to suspend civil liberties and force people to be quarantined or vaccinated whenever a public health emergency was declared. 10 It was scary enough to prompt New York state health officials to mandate that health care workers get seasonal and H1N1 influenza shots or be fired.
And then there were calls by public health officials for children to line up and get vaccinated in schools 12 just like in the polio mass vaccination campaigns of the 1950’s and early 60’s.
Older Americans Have Antibodies to H1N1 Swine Flu
Throughout the summer, we were told that H1N1 swine flu was sweeping through the country 13 and millions of us had already been infected with the new virus and pregnant women and children were dying. 1Curiously, many Americans over 60 were told they didn’t need H1N1 vaccine because we were still protected by antibodies we got when we recovered from being infected with similar H1N1 flu strains in the past.
Drug Companies Want Adjuvants, No More Eggs
And then, the vaccine manufacturers, who had been pressing the FDA for decades to let them use reactive squalene adjuvants in vaccines, started complaining that they couldn’t grow the H1N1 virus fast enough. The threat of vaccine shortages suddenly loomed on the horizon.
The drug companies complained that they didn’t want to use chicken eggs anymore to make flu vaccines. They wanted the FDA to let them use insects and e coli bacteria and fungus and virus like protein particles and dog kidney cells and other really, really interesting stuff.
This is an EMERGENCY they said and drug companies need to be allowed to make flu vaccine any way they want to right now because this is a really serious public health emergency. And, oh by the way, let’s not forget that it is so serious that everyone who has anything to do with making, promoting and giving new flu vaccines need to be shielded from liability in civil court if people get hurt or die after getting vaccinated.
Yes, it was enough to make us all very, very afraid.
H1N1 Swine Flu Looks Like Seasonal Flu
And when we are really afraid, we don’t think we have time to ask questions or double check the facts. We just want someone to tell us what to do right now so we can feel safe and not afraid anymore.
By the end of the summer, while the drug companies and NIH were testing the new H1N1 vaccines on several thousand healthy American children and adults, reports started coming out of Australia and the southern hemisphere where they had just finished their influenza season, that the H1N1 swine flu virus was really not so bad after all. It was not causing excess mortality, which means there weren’t more people dying from H1N1 than had died in years past from other seasonal flu strains.
Yes, people were getting sick with what looked like influenza just like they do every year but –for most people – it was a few days of fever, chills, body aches, runny nose and cough, maybe some diarrhea, staying in bed, drinking lots of water and juice, and then – feeling just fine again.
CDC Stops Confirming Most Suspected H1N1 Cases
Abruptly at the end of July – when the Secretary of Health quietly extended the national public health emergency declaration for three more months - the CDC announced they were not going to lab confirm suspected cases of H1N1 swine flu anymore. The CDC told the states not to test Americans who were flooding doctors offices and hospitals with symptoms of influenza and confirm that they WERE in fact suffering from type A or B influenza, especially H1N1 swine flu.
The story was – if it looks like influenza then it IS influenza and can be ASSUMED to be H1N1 swine flu.
Really? Is that how the CDC “scientifically” calculates how many Americans die from regular influenza every year?
Two to Four Flu Shots For Many Young Children
The decision to stop testing for H1N1 was followed by an announcement that all children between the ages of 6 months and 10 years - who had never gotten a flu shot before - should get 4 doses of influenza vaccine this year: two seasonal flu shots and two doses of H1N1 vaccine. Further, that the millions of chronically ill and disabled children and adults and also pregnant women should be the first in line to get two shots of influenza vaccine this year.
And then Americans, who were still very afraid, started asking questions because most of us, who got sick with flu-like symptoms this year, realized that it was no worse than the flu we got last year. And most of us didn’t know anyone who had died from the flu this year, which was true for most other years as well.
Two to Four Doses of Mercury?
And then we started asking questions about why young children needed two to four doses of influenza vaccine this year. And we thought - what is up with mercury still being in most vials of influenza vaccine? We thought – is it really a good idea to give children – whose doctors don’t have access to single dose vials of mercury free flu vaccine – two to four doses of mercury this year? Especially when it is against HazMat regulations to pour unused mercury containing influenza vaccine down the drain or toss it into a garbage can?
Is It Influenza, Seasonal, H1N1 or None of the Above?
And then a veteran investigative journalist at a major news network published an interesting report about the fact that 83 to 97 percent of all specimens of suspected H1N1 cases sent to the CDC by state health departments for lab confirmation last spring and summer came back negative - for not only H1N1 swine flu influenza - but also negative for ANY kind of type A or Type B influenza. at all. Which confirmed what the CDC’s influenza expert said at an FDA meeting in 2003: that 80 percent of all flu-like illness every year is not actually influenza but viral and bacterial infections that LOOK like influenza.
Wait a minute. Didn’t President Obama stand up at a press conference in October and say that 1,000 Americans, including about 100 children, had died from H1N1 swine flu?
But were those 1,000 H1N1 lab confirmed deaths or deaths that were ASSUMED by the CDC to be deaths caused by swine flu?
And how does that number of deaths compare with the 36,000 deaths that CDC officials say are caused by seasonal influenza every year?
People Started Asking Questions
And then something unusual happened. Doctors started asking questions and privately some of them told their patients not to bother getting the H1N1 vaccine. And the people, who were still being told by health officials to be very, very afraid, started to do their own research using the great new Library of the World, the internet. People started asking more questions of their government health officials – not just in America – but in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in Germany and Italy, in Poland and in Canada and many other countries.
And then the poll results started coming in revealing that about 50 percent of us were saying “yes” I want to get a swine flu shot and 50 percent of us were saying “No, thank you.”
Fear or Facts?
And that is where it stands today. Some of us are still very afraid and some of us are not.
I am reminded of a famous quote from Abraham Lincoln: You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
New Vaccine Ingredients Calculator
And I would urge those of you who want to get seasonal or H1N1 vaccines, to go to the homepage of the website of the National Vaccine Information Center at www.NVIC.org and look at the new Vaccine Ingredient Calculator, which will tell you how much mercury is in those vaccines.
Support NVIC’s Research & Public Education Programs
And I would urge those of you, who want better vaccine science and the right to make vaccine choices, to become a donor supporter of the National Vaccine Information Center’s research and public education programs. Truth and freedom are not free, especially when there are so many doing so much to limit the people’s access to both.
". . . If the State can tag, track down and force citizens against their will to be injected with biologicals of unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow."
NVIC Launches Research Fund To Study Health & Vaccination
by Barbara Loe Fisher
“Show Us the Science and Give Us the Choice” was the rallying cry of the 700 parents and health care workers who traveled from 44 states and 11 nations to attend the groundbreaking Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center Oct. 2-4, 2009. The historic conference featured presentations by more than 40 world experts in the areas of vaccine science, policy, law, and ethics and raised more than $100,000 to launch an international fund raising campaign for scientific research to investigate health differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated children and identify those at risk for suffering vaccine injury.
Families with healthy children and those with vaccine injured children joined hands with nurses, doctors and allied health care workers in a united call for quality scientific research and the human right to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions. What we witnessed was a celebration of the human spirit and what we affirmed was dedication to truth in science and the duty to protect the biological integrity of our children.
We are not going to wait any longer for government or industry to answer the big question of whether the nearly 70 doses of 16 vaccines that doctors now give our children between the day of birth and age 18 is contributing to the unexplained chronic disease and disability epidemic that is harming far too many of our children. With 1 child in 6 now learning disabled; 1 in 9 asthmatic; 1 in 100 developing autism; 1 in 450 diabetic and millions more suffering with seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, bi-polar disorder and other chronic illness, the National Vaccine Information Center is assembling a group of independent experts from multiple scientific disciplines to immediately evaluate and act to protect our children’s health.
NVIC’s Children’s Fund for Hope, Health and Healing will raise funds to first create data collection systems and conduct small preliminary studies with a longer term goal of conducting a large 10-year clinical study. The scientific research program will evaluate health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals; identify potential high risk factors for adverse responses to vaccination; and investigate the biological mechanisms for vaccine injury and death.
Vicky Debold, PhD, RN, who teaches health research methods at George Mason University and has served as NVIC’s Director of Patient Safety for three years, has been appointed Scientific Research Director for NVIC’s Children’s Fund for Hope, Health & Healing. She is assembling a steering committee of health research experts and has pledged “to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to understand why so many healthy infants and children are regressing after vaccination and becoming chronically ill.”
NVIC will also raise funds to strengthen informed consent protections in US vaccine laws and support health care workers seeking to protect their right to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions. Dawn Richardson, co-founder and president of PROVE, has been appointed as NVIC’s Director of State Advocacy. Mrs. Richardson led a seven-year successful grassroots campaign to obtain conscientious belief exemption to vaccination in Texas in 2003. She said “There is too much abuse of executive power taking place at the state level when it comes to mandatory vaccination.”
If you want to support unbiased, scientific research into the health effects of vaccination and be part of this historic grassroots movement to defend truth in science and the informed consent principle, become a donor supporter of the consumer-led non-profit (501c3) National Vaccine Information Center. The world’s largest and oldest vaccine safety and informed consent organization is funded by donations from individual citizens and foundations, including Dr. Joseph Mercola and the Albert and Claire Dwoskin Family Foundation. NVIC takes no pharmaceutical industry or government funding.
You can direct your tax deductible donation to scientific research or informed consent advocacy – or both. It’s your choice.
Go to www.NVIC.org to learn more about NVIC’s unmatched 28 year record of public service to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths and also learn how to make an informed decision about H1N1 swine flu vaccination. It’s your family, your health and your choice.
A heartfelt thank you to all the parents, grandparents, nurses, doctors, scientists and health care workers who came and made history with us at the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination. You are writing a new chapter in the three decade vaccine safety and informed consent movement.
Together, we CAN stand up and protect our human right to make informed, voluntary vaccine decisions based on good science. Because the future is ours to change for the better if we have the courage and believe we can do it.
Click here to support NVIC’s Research and Advocacy programs.
“The conference was a complete triumph and will go down in history.”
“Thank you Barbara Fisher and your entire support team for an
outstanding conference. My husband and I were so impressed with the entire conference. The speakers were great and the attendees were knowledgable and committed. There was not a wasted moment. As Barbara said, it was a "World Class Conference". It is regrettable that the press did not attend. But committed, loving, concerned moms are powerful force as your organization has shown. Getting the truth out is a challenge in a truth challenged world.
This issue is so much a matter of integrity and it is shocking how little of that important quality is available today.”
“Congratulations on an amazing conference. I think it was the most well attended conference I have ever been to! I am so proud of you and the work of the NVIC.”
“Thank-you so much for the invaluable conference that you put on this past weekend. The speakers you brought together from around the world were amazing. We are fortunate that we were able to attend. There is comfort in knowing that individuals with the utmost integrity and strength have dedicated everything they have in them to magnify the fact that valid science has never been done on the risks and benefits of mass vaccination. I applaud you and others for holding your head's high for nearly 30 years despite the ridicule and opposition you have faced…. My husband, myself, and my family want to be a part of this. Change needs to take place as fast as possible.”
“All I can say is AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING. The conference was phenomenal. I can't wait to see everything that comes out of this now…
Thanks again for pulling together such an amazing array of experts and people It was truly a wonderful weekend.”
“I am a long time supporter of NVIC, since Chiropractic College. I was at the conference this past weekend and found it just so Incredible on so many levels. The speakers were invaluable, the presentations, the quality of people attending and the contacts that I made were amazing! I write to you today to let you know that I will be a huge supporter of this new study that you are embarking on, good for you!! It's about time I say…. I applaud you for your bravery and unending dedication for truth and the pursuit of freedom of choice. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you.”
”Congratulations on pulling off a WONDERFUL conference. I worked a lot of conferences in the past as a webcaster and none even touched the excitement and passion that all those who attended had. It was truly an amazing experience to be a part of. I am so excited for NVIC. It's truly an honor to be a part of such a wonderful thing!!”
“I just wanted to say THANK YOU again for all your hard work in making the conference happen this year. I was thrilled to be part of this event. Thank you for all the work the NVIC does to educate and empower us to make informed choices. My mission now is to start working with my state legislators to move the philosophical exemption bill forward!! Thanks again - I'm telling everyone I can about the study that NVIC is now raising money for as well!”
“What a great gathering of fantastic speakers on this topic!! I purchased the recordings already . Just wanted to thank and commend you for all of your hard work!! Keep fighting...people are listening!!
“Show Us the Science and Give Us the Choice” was the rallying cry of the 700 parents and health care workers who traveled from 44 states and 11 nations to attend the groundbreaking Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center Oct. 2-4, 2009. The historic conference featured presentations by more than 40 world experts in the areas of vaccine science, policy, law, and ethics and raised more than $100,000 to launch an international fund raising campaign for scientific research to investigate health differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated children and identify those at risk for suffering vaccine injury.
Families with healthy children and those with vaccine injured children joined hands with nurses, doctors and allied health care workers in a united call for quality scientific research and the human right to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions. What we witnessed was a celebration of the human spirit and what we affirmed was dedication to truth in science and the duty to protect the biological integrity of our children.
We are not going to wait any longer for government or industry to answer the big question of whether the nearly 70 doses of 16 vaccines that doctors now give our children between the day of birth and age 18 is contributing to the unexplained chronic disease and disability epidemic that is harming far too many of our children. With 1 child in 6 now learning disabled; 1 in 9 asthmatic; 1 in 100 developing autism; 1 in 450 diabetic and millions more suffering with seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, bi-polar disorder and other chronic illness, the National Vaccine Information Center is assembling a group of independent experts from multiple scientific disciplines to immediately evaluate and act to protect our children’s health.
NVIC’s Children’s Fund for Hope, Health and Healing will raise funds to first create data collection systems and conduct small preliminary studies with a longer term goal of conducting a large 10-year clinical study. The scientific research program will evaluate health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals; identify potential high risk factors for adverse responses to vaccination; and investigate the biological mechanisms for vaccine injury and death.
Vicky Debold, PhD, RN, who teaches health research methods at George Mason University and has served as NVIC’s Director of Patient Safety for three years, has been appointed Scientific Research Director for NVIC’s Children’s Fund for Hope, Health & Healing. She is assembling a steering committee of health research experts and has pledged “to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to understand why so many healthy infants and children are regressing after vaccination and becoming chronically ill.”
NVIC will also raise funds to strengthen informed consent protections in US vaccine laws and support health care workers seeking to protect their right to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions. Dawn Richardson, co-founder and president of PROVE, has been appointed as NVIC’s Director of State Advocacy. Mrs. Richardson led a seven-year successful grassroots campaign to obtain conscientious belief exemption to vaccination in Texas in 2003. She said “There is too much abuse of executive power taking place at the state level when it comes to mandatory vaccination.”
If you want to support unbiased, scientific research into the health effects of vaccination and be part of this historic grassroots movement to defend truth in science and the informed consent principle, become a donor supporter of the consumer-led non-profit (501c3) National Vaccine Information Center. The world’s largest and oldest vaccine safety and informed consent organization is funded by donations from individual citizens and foundations, including Dr. Joseph Mercola and the Albert and Claire Dwoskin Family Foundation. NVIC takes no pharmaceutical industry or government funding.
You can direct your tax deductible donation to scientific research or informed consent advocacy – or both. It’s your choice.
Go to www.NVIC.org to learn more about NVIC’s unmatched 28 year record of public service to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths and also learn how to make an informed decision about H1N1 swine flu vaccination. It’s your family, your health and your choice.
A heartfelt thank you to all the parents, grandparents, nurses, doctors, scientists and health care workers who came and made history with us at the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination. You are writing a new chapter in the three decade vaccine safety and informed consent movement.
Together, we CAN stand up and protect our human right to make informed, voluntary vaccine decisions based on good science. Because the future is ours to change for the better if we have the courage and believe we can do it.
Click here to support NVIC’s Research and Advocacy programs.
“The conference was a complete triumph and will go down in history.”
“Thank you Barbara Fisher and your entire support team for an
outstanding conference. My husband and I were so impressed with the entire conference. The speakers were great and the attendees were knowledgable and committed. There was not a wasted moment. As Barbara said, it was a "World Class Conference". It is regrettable that the press did not attend. But committed, loving, concerned moms are powerful force as your organization has shown. Getting the truth out is a challenge in a truth challenged world.
This issue is so much a matter of integrity and it is shocking how little of that important quality is available today.”
“Congratulations on an amazing conference. I think it was the most well attended conference I have ever been to! I am so proud of you and the work of the NVIC.”
“Thank-you so much for the invaluable conference that you put on this past weekend. The speakers you brought together from around the world were amazing. We are fortunate that we were able to attend. There is comfort in knowing that individuals with the utmost integrity and strength have dedicated everything they have in them to magnify the fact that valid science has never been done on the risks and benefits of mass vaccination. I applaud you and others for holding your head's high for nearly 30 years despite the ridicule and opposition you have faced…. My husband, myself, and my family want to be a part of this. Change needs to take place as fast as possible.”
“All I can say is AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING. The conference was phenomenal. I can't wait to see everything that comes out of this now…
Thanks again for pulling together such an amazing array of experts and people It was truly a wonderful weekend.”
“I am a long time supporter of NVIC, since Chiropractic College. I was at the conference this past weekend and found it just so Incredible on so many levels. The speakers were invaluable, the presentations, the quality of people attending and the contacts that I made were amazing! I write to you today to let you know that I will be a huge supporter of this new study that you are embarking on, good for you!! It's about time I say…. I applaud you for your bravery and unending dedication for truth and the pursuit of freedom of choice. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you.”
”Congratulations on pulling off a WONDERFUL conference. I worked a lot of conferences in the past as a webcaster and none even touched the excitement and passion that all those who attended had. It was truly an amazing experience to be a part of. I am so excited for NVIC. It's truly an honor to be a part of such a wonderful thing!!”
“I just wanted to say THANK YOU again for all your hard work in making the conference happen this year. I was thrilled to be part of this event. Thank you for all the work the NVIC does to educate and empower us to make informed choices. My mission now is to start working with my state legislators to move the philosophical exemption bill forward!! Thanks again - I'm telling everyone I can about the study that NVIC is now raising money for as well!”
“What a great gathering of fantastic speakers on this topic!! I purchased the recordings already . Just wanted to thank and commend you for all of your hard work!! Keep fighting...people are listening!!
Mild Swine Flu & Over-Hyped Vaccine
by Barbara Loe Fisher
Every day Americans wake up to news reports that warn us about the dangers of influenza, especially the new H1N1 “swine flu” and the need to roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated. We are witnessing a roll-out of the largest, most expensive mass vaccination campaign in the history of our nation. A rollout that is bigger than even the polio vaccine campaigns of the 1950's.
How much do you know about the disease or vaccine risks so you can make an informed decision about whether to get flu shots for yourself or your children?
H1N1 “Swine Flu” Mild
First, the good news is that swine flu is mild for most people and the virus is not mutating into a more serious form. By the end of September, there had been about 600 deaths in America including about 50 deaths in young children. Complications from infectious diseases like influenza are more common in people with heart, respiratory and other health problems and that is true for swine flu.
Limited Testing of Swine Flu Vaccines
Swine flu vaccines have been tested on only a few thousand healthy Americans for a few weeks. There is little or no information about how safe the vaccine is for pregnant women and chronically ill or disabled children because only a handfull were part of the testing. Nobody will know how safe the vaccine really is until it is given to millions of Americans this year and next year.
Drive-By Flu Shots Risky
Swine flu vaccine is not just being given to children and adults in clinics and doctors offices but also in non-medical settings like pharmacies, stores, schools and even at drive-by kiosks. Getting vaccinated in a non-medical setting can be risky. Driving a car immediately after getting vaccinated, when you could suffer an unexpected a shock collapse reaction can be deadly.
No Compensation For Swine Flu Victims
If you or your child are injured from getting a flu swine flu shot, you are on your own. Because Congress shielded the vaccine manufacturers and any person giving swine flu shots from lawsuits if people get hurt. There is no funded government vaccine injury compensation program for swine flu vaccine.
Swine Flu Reactions: “It’s a Coincidence”
But even if there was a funded vaccine injury compensation program - like the one that had to be created by the federal government in 1976 after that year's swine flu vaccine paralyzed about 500 Americans and killed 25, there is little chance you would be compensated if you or your child does become vaccine injured.
Federal health officials are already pre-emptively warning Americans that most of the deaths and cases of brain inflammation, seizures, paralysis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, strokes, heart attacks, miscarriages and other serious health problems that develop after swine flu vaccination will be considered a “coincidence” and not related in any way to the flu shots just given.
Prevent Vaccine Injuries
This makes it even more important for Americans to become informed health care consumers. If you choose to get vaccinated and you or your child do suffer a health complication, insist that the health care worker who gave the shot immediately files a report with the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. If the person who gave the flu shot won't file a vaccine reaction report, you can file it yourself.
Do NOT let a doctor or anyone else tell you that a serious health problem you or your child experiences after vaccination is a coincidence and allow more shots to be given until you know for sure. The most tragic cases of vaccine injury occur when vaccine reaction symptoms are dismissed as a 'coincidence" and more vaccines are given that result in more severe symptoms and sometimes end with permanent brain and immune system damage or death.
Thimerosal in Multi-Dose Vials
Injectable flu shots in multi-dose vials contain the mercury preservative, thimerosal, and some come in single dose vials and do not contain mercury. If you get vaccinated, make sure you know what is in the vaccine you are getting because people can be very allergic to different components of vaccines. And some people can't get the live virus flu vaccine.
FOUR Flu Shots for Young Children?
Doctors are telling some children under 10 years old to get 3 to 4 flu shots this year - 2 shots for seasonal flu and one or two more for swine flu. We have never given young children 3 to 4 flu shots in a single year and there is no information about how safe it is to do that.
Government Spend Billions On H1N1 Vaccine Program
Swine flu shots are free for most Americans because the government has given $1 billion dollars to pharmaceutical companies to create the new swine flu vaccines and has given another $5 billion dollars to state and federal health agencies to promote and deliver the influenza vaccines to people. That is a lot of money. The push to get vaccinated is like nothing we have ever seen before.
Most People Recover From Swine Flu
The fact is: Millions of people around the world have recovered from swine flu and millions more will get sick with fevers, body aches, nasal congestion, cough and sometimes diarrhea and vomiting and recover from it this year and next year without any complications.
People who recover from influenza, including swine flu, get long lasting protection from the flu strain they recovered from. Actually, most people over 60 won't get swine flu this year because they recovered from influenza caused by a similar swine flu strain in the past and still have protective antibodies.
Just the Facts, Not the Hype
So, here are the facts:
* The new swine influenza is mild for most people even though a small number have developed complications and died.
* The swine flu vaccine has been tested for only a few weeks on a few thousand healthy children and adults, including very few pregnant women. We don't know how safe it really is for pregnant women or children and adults with chronic illness even though they are being specially targeted for vaccination by government health officials.
* There is very little information about how safe it is to give swine flu vaccine with other vaccines, including seasonal influenza vaccine.
* There is very little information about whether the swine flu shot will keep you from getting swine flu.
All Vaccines Come With Side Effects: Weigh Risks
All pharmaceutical products, including vaccines, come with side effects. The risk of having a vaccine reaction depends upon the vaccine you are getting; your personal and family medical history; whether you are sick or healthy at the time of vaccination; whether you are taking other medications; and whether you have reacted to vaccines before.
If you decide you or your children are going to get swine flu shots this year, you can learn more by visiting www.NVIC.org.
If Your Child’s School Has Vaccine Clinics
And if you have a child, whose school is going to be holding vaccine clinics and you do NOT want your child to get vaccinated in school, you can take the following actions:
Number One: Write a letter to the school principal stating you do not want your child vaccinated in school without your written consent.
Number Two: Ask to be notified in advance exactly when the in-school vaccine clinics will be held.
Support NVIC, Get Red “NO VACCINE FOR ME” Bracelets
Number Three: Support NVIC and raise awareness in your community by giving your child a red NO VACCINE FOR ME bracelet to wear to school. And wear one yourself.
Go to www.NVIC.org to donate and learn more about how to be prepared for the pandemic public health emergency that has been declared in your state. Learn about the public health laws that govern you. Learn about how you can change them by becoming a citizen activist.
Health Workers Being Forced To Get H1N1 Vaccine
Right now, the government says that the swine flu vaccination program is voluntary. That nobody will be forced to get vaccinated. However, health care workers in New York and other states ARE being forced by law to get swine flu shots this year.
Will that be true for all of us next year?
Stand Up For Your Informed Consent Rights
Please join NVIC and become a grassroots vaccine safety and informed consent advocate in your community. Stand up for the human right to make informed, voluntary health care choices, including vaccine choices, today - so your children and grandchildren and all Americans will have that right tomorrow.
Every day Americans wake up to news reports that warn us about the dangers of influenza, especially the new H1N1 “swine flu” and the need to roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated. We are witnessing a roll-out of the largest, most expensive mass vaccination campaign in the history of our nation. A rollout that is bigger than even the polio vaccine campaigns of the 1950's.
How much do you know about the disease or vaccine risks so you can make an informed decision about whether to get flu shots for yourself or your children?
H1N1 “Swine Flu” Mild
First, the good news is that swine flu is mild for most people and the virus is not mutating into a more serious form. By the end of September, there had been about 600 deaths in America including about 50 deaths in young children. Complications from infectious diseases like influenza are more common in people with heart, respiratory and other health problems and that is true for swine flu.
Limited Testing of Swine Flu Vaccines
Swine flu vaccines have been tested on only a few thousand healthy Americans for a few weeks. There is little or no information about how safe the vaccine is for pregnant women and chronically ill or disabled children because only a handfull were part of the testing. Nobody will know how safe the vaccine really is until it is given to millions of Americans this year and next year.
Drive-By Flu Shots Risky
Swine flu vaccine is not just being given to children and adults in clinics and doctors offices but also in non-medical settings like pharmacies, stores, schools and even at drive-by kiosks. Getting vaccinated in a non-medical setting can be risky. Driving a car immediately after getting vaccinated, when you could suffer an unexpected a shock collapse reaction can be deadly.
No Compensation For Swine Flu Victims
If you or your child are injured from getting a flu swine flu shot, you are on your own. Because Congress shielded the vaccine manufacturers and any person giving swine flu shots from lawsuits if people get hurt. There is no funded government vaccine injury compensation program for swine flu vaccine.
Swine Flu Reactions: “It’s a Coincidence”
But even if there was a funded vaccine injury compensation program - like the one that had to be created by the federal government in 1976 after that year's swine flu vaccine paralyzed about 500 Americans and killed 25, there is little chance you would be compensated if you or your child does become vaccine injured.
Federal health officials are already pre-emptively warning Americans that most of the deaths and cases of brain inflammation, seizures, paralysis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, strokes, heart attacks, miscarriages and other serious health problems that develop after swine flu vaccination will be considered a “coincidence” and not related in any way to the flu shots just given.
Prevent Vaccine Injuries
This makes it even more important for Americans to become informed health care consumers. If you choose to get vaccinated and you or your child do suffer a health complication, insist that the health care worker who gave the shot immediately files a report with the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. If the person who gave the flu shot won't file a vaccine reaction report, you can file it yourself.
Do NOT let a doctor or anyone else tell you that a serious health problem you or your child experiences after vaccination is a coincidence and allow more shots to be given until you know for sure. The most tragic cases of vaccine injury occur when vaccine reaction symptoms are dismissed as a 'coincidence" and more vaccines are given that result in more severe symptoms and sometimes end with permanent brain and immune system damage or death.
Thimerosal in Multi-Dose Vials
Injectable flu shots in multi-dose vials contain the mercury preservative, thimerosal, and some come in single dose vials and do not contain mercury. If you get vaccinated, make sure you know what is in the vaccine you are getting because people can be very allergic to different components of vaccines. And some people can't get the live virus flu vaccine.
FOUR Flu Shots for Young Children?
Doctors are telling some children under 10 years old to get 3 to 4 flu shots this year - 2 shots for seasonal flu and one or two more for swine flu. We have never given young children 3 to 4 flu shots in a single year and there is no information about how safe it is to do that.
Government Spend Billions On H1N1 Vaccine Program
Swine flu shots are free for most Americans because the government has given $1 billion dollars to pharmaceutical companies to create the new swine flu vaccines and has given another $5 billion dollars to state and federal health agencies to promote and deliver the influenza vaccines to people. That is a lot of money. The push to get vaccinated is like nothing we have ever seen before.
Most People Recover From Swine Flu
The fact is: Millions of people around the world have recovered from swine flu and millions more will get sick with fevers, body aches, nasal congestion, cough and sometimes diarrhea and vomiting and recover from it this year and next year without any complications.
People who recover from influenza, including swine flu, get long lasting protection from the flu strain they recovered from. Actually, most people over 60 won't get swine flu this year because they recovered from influenza caused by a similar swine flu strain in the past and still have protective antibodies.
Just the Facts, Not the Hype
So, here are the facts:
* The new swine influenza is mild for most people even though a small number have developed complications and died.
* The swine flu vaccine has been tested for only a few weeks on a few thousand healthy children and adults, including very few pregnant women. We don't know how safe it really is for pregnant women or children and adults with chronic illness even though they are being specially targeted for vaccination by government health officials.
* There is very little information about how safe it is to give swine flu vaccine with other vaccines, including seasonal influenza vaccine.
* There is very little information about whether the swine flu shot will keep you from getting swine flu.
All Vaccines Come With Side Effects: Weigh Risks
All pharmaceutical products, including vaccines, come with side effects. The risk of having a vaccine reaction depends upon the vaccine you are getting; your personal and family medical history; whether you are sick or healthy at the time of vaccination; whether you are taking other medications; and whether you have reacted to vaccines before.
If you decide you or your children are going to get swine flu shots this year, you can learn more by visiting www.NVIC.org.
If Your Child’s School Has Vaccine Clinics
And if you have a child, whose school is going to be holding vaccine clinics and you do NOT want your child to get vaccinated in school, you can take the following actions:
Number One: Write a letter to the school principal stating you do not want your child vaccinated in school without your written consent.
Number Two: Ask to be notified in advance exactly when the in-school vaccine clinics will be held.
Support NVIC, Get Red “NO VACCINE FOR ME” Bracelets
Number Three: Support NVIC and raise awareness in your community by giving your child a red NO VACCINE FOR ME bracelet to wear to school. And wear one yourself.
Go to www.NVIC.org to donate and learn more about how to be prepared for the pandemic public health emergency that has been declared in your state. Learn about the public health laws that govern you. Learn about how you can change them by becoming a citizen activist.
Health Workers Being Forced To Get H1N1 Vaccine
Right now, the government says that the swine flu vaccination program is voluntary. That nobody will be forced to get vaccinated. However, health care workers in New York and other states ARE being forced by law to get swine flu shots this year.
Will that be true for all of us next year?
Stand Up For Your Informed Consent Rights
Please join NVIC and become a grassroots vaccine safety and informed consent advocate in your community. Stand up for the human right to make informed, voluntary health care choices, including vaccine choices, today - so your children and grandchildren and all Americans will have that right tomorrow.
Gardasil & Swine Flu Vaccines: Inconvenient Truths
by Barbara Loe Fisher
The summer of 2009 revealed two inconvenient truths about vaccination: first, the Gardasil vaccine is not as safe for girls as the government, medical organizations and Merck have said it is; and second, the H1N1 influenza pandemic is not as serious as health officials are telling us it is. Which means that fast tracked swine flu vaccines children will get in schools this fall may end up being more risky than getting the flu.
Doctors Question Benefits & Merck Marketing Tactics
On August 19, the Journal of the American Medical Association published two important articles written by doctors questioning whether HPV vaccine benefits outweigh the risks of recommending it for all young girls. The intellectually honest doctors publicly criticized the aggressive marketing of Gardasil vaccine by Merck and certain Merck-funded U.S. medical organizations and asked for more scientific evidence that universal HPV vaccination is necessary, safe and effective.
Bad Outcome Report After 1 In Every 1,855 Gardasil Shots
In the third article, written by government health officials, it was revealed that 1 in every 1,855 Gardasil shots is followed by a bad health outcome report to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.
These bad health outcomes reported after Gardasil shots include lots of girls suddenly passing out and having seizures within minutes or hours of getting vaccinated and suffering head injuries and broken bones when they hit the floor. In fact, there is a larger than expected rate of girls passing out after getting Gardasil vaccine.
Girls Passing Out & Having Car Accidents
Back in 2007, the National Vaccine Information Center warned that many girls given Gardasil shots were losing consciousness within minutes or hours. Some girls have left doctors offices and fallen unconscious while driving and had car accidents. This brings up the little known fact that four girls who got Gardasil in Merck’s pre-licensure clinical trials died in car accidents. How many of those girls suddenly collapsed while driving?
Clearly, Gardasil vaccine should be given while girls are lying down and they should be warned that sudden collapse can occur without warning within 24 hours of getting vaccinated.
Blood Clots Reports After Gardasil
What else did the recently published government study on Gardasil reveal? Well, we now know that there is a greater than expected rate of reported blood clots in girls who get the vaccine. Some blood clots can lead to pulmonary embolism or stroke, which means the blood clot ends up in the lung or in the brain. In fact four girls have died after they developed a blood clot that traveled to the lung after Gardasil vaccination.
Most Bad Outcome Reports Merck Files FDA Can’t Analyze
But the most shocking fact in this study is that, although nearly 70 percent of all Gardasil reaction reports were filed by Merck, a whopping 89 percent of the reports Merck did file were so incomplete there was not enough information for health officials to do a proper follow-up and review of what happened to the girls who fell unconscious or had convulsions, developed blood clots or inflammation of the brain and nerves, including Guillain Barre syndrome that causes paralysis, or those who suddenly developed serious autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and more.
There were 32 reports of Gardasil-related deaths between 2006 and the end of 2008 but only 20 of these death reports had enough information to be followed up. There are now a total of 43 deaths that have been reported. How many of those Gardasil related deaths cannot be evaluated because of incomplete information?
1986 Law Requires Reporting of Vaccine Injuries & Deaths
This is an outrage. Under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, it is a federal legal requirement for any person – a doctor, nurse or any person who gives a vaccination in America – to file a report with the federal government whenever a vaccination is followed by a bad health outcome, especially a hospitalization, injury or death. Vaccine providers are NOT supposed to be notifying the vaccine manufacturer – which clearly is like flushing the vaccine reaction report down the toilet – they are supposed to be notifying the government. And health officials at the FDA and CDC are supposed to be analyzing each and every report of a serious vaccine injury or death.
Massive Underreporting of Vaccine Bad Outcomes
FDA and CDC officials admit that there is underreporting of vaccine-related bad health outcomes. In fact, some studies say that less than 10 percent or even less than 1 percent of serious vaccine adverse events are ever reported.
Closed Government Databases Used to Deny Vaccine Risks
But health officials are quick to downplay the significance of this. They tell us not to worry because the closed government databases, which the CDC operates with vaccine manufacturers and HMO’s they pay to participate in them, can be relied upon to reassure us that all those seizures and blood clots and cases of brain inflammation, paralysis, lupus and deaths in girls who get Gardasil shots are really – mostly - just a coincidence.
In 2005, the National Vaccine Information Center and other parent groups called on the CDC and FDA to open up those closed government vaccine monitoring databases to public scrutiny.
So far, most of that vaccine reaction data is still hidden from public view so it can’t be independently verified.
Will H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Risks Be Hidden From Public?
If the government can let vaccine manufacturers fast track Gardasil vaccine but can’t compel the drug company that makes the vaccine or doctors giving the vaccine - who are shielded from liability - to report each and every death and serious injury that follows vaccination, why should we believe anything government health officials tell us about the safety of vaccines?
Why should we believe that the experimental swine flu vaccines being fast tracked with only a few weeks of study in healthy children and adults are going to be safe and that all vaccine reactions will be reported to the government and then properly followed up?
No Way To Monitor H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Side Effects In Schools
It is far more likely that, when children get swine flu vaccine in schools and then get really sick or even die like the Gardasil girls, that all those bad health outcomes will be written off as a coincidence by health officials. That is, IF any reports are made to the government at all! Because few school nurses or other people giving children swine flu vaccines in the schools will be taking medical histories; or have a way to record vaccine information in children’s medical records, much less monitor children for signs of a vaccine reaction and then file a reaction report to the government.
This is not the way to run a national vaccine program. This is not what we expect from doctors in positions of authority who have accepted responsibility for protecting our individual health or the health of our nation.
Doctors & Drug Companies Shielded From Liability Ignoring the Law
In the early 1980’s, parents of DPT vaccine injured children worked very hard on getting informing, recording and reporting safety provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. We wanted to make sure everything was being done to help prevent vaccine injuries and deaths. Little did we know then that those safety provisions would be blown off by doctors and vaccine manufacturers shielded from liability in that law.
The federal vaccine safety provisions should be codified into every state vaccine law with legal sanctions for doctors and drug companies who fail to file a complete vaccine reaction report.
What Public Health Emergency?
And now, today, we have swine flu vaccines that are being rushed to market with even less testing that the fast tracked Gardasil vaccine had, with the justification that there is a public health emergency. What public health emergency?
As everyone knows by now, the swine flu is no more serious than the garden variety influenza that goes around every year. Just like everyone knows by now that most cervical cancer can be prevented with regular Pap screening and that the very expensive HPV vaccine is questionable at best.
Why are we letting employees working for government agencies and pharmaceutical companies stampede us into taking vaccines that may not be necessary, safe or effective and – certainly - are not properly monitored for safety after they are given to tens of millions of children and adults?
It is time to demand that government officials and drug companies stop conducting national vaccine experiments on the American people.
Come To Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination
If you want to learn more about vaccines and how to be a vaccine safety and informed consent advocate in your community, come to the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination being held October 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to http://www.nvic.org/.
Watch the video bellow:
The summer of 2009 revealed two inconvenient truths about vaccination: first, the Gardasil vaccine is not as safe for girls as the government, medical organizations and Merck have said it is; and second, the H1N1 influenza pandemic is not as serious as health officials are telling us it is. Which means that fast tracked swine flu vaccines children will get in schools this fall may end up being more risky than getting the flu.
Doctors Question Benefits & Merck Marketing Tactics
On August 19, the Journal of the American Medical Association published two important articles written by doctors questioning whether HPV vaccine benefits outweigh the risks of recommending it for all young girls. The intellectually honest doctors publicly criticized the aggressive marketing of Gardasil vaccine by Merck and certain Merck-funded U.S. medical organizations and asked for more scientific evidence that universal HPV vaccination is necessary, safe and effective.
Bad Outcome Report After 1 In Every 1,855 Gardasil Shots
In the third article, written by government health officials, it was revealed that 1 in every 1,855 Gardasil shots is followed by a bad health outcome report to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.
These bad health outcomes reported after Gardasil shots include lots of girls suddenly passing out and having seizures within minutes or hours of getting vaccinated and suffering head injuries and broken bones when they hit the floor. In fact, there is a larger than expected rate of girls passing out after getting Gardasil vaccine.
Girls Passing Out & Having Car Accidents
Back in 2007, the National Vaccine Information Center warned that many girls given Gardasil shots were losing consciousness within minutes or hours. Some girls have left doctors offices and fallen unconscious while driving and had car accidents. This brings up the little known fact that four girls who got Gardasil in Merck’s pre-licensure clinical trials died in car accidents. How many of those girls suddenly collapsed while driving?
Clearly, Gardasil vaccine should be given while girls are lying down and they should be warned that sudden collapse can occur without warning within 24 hours of getting vaccinated.
Blood Clots Reports After Gardasil
What else did the recently published government study on Gardasil reveal? Well, we now know that there is a greater than expected rate of reported blood clots in girls who get the vaccine. Some blood clots can lead to pulmonary embolism or stroke, which means the blood clot ends up in the lung or in the brain. In fact four girls have died after they developed a blood clot that traveled to the lung after Gardasil vaccination.
Most Bad Outcome Reports Merck Files FDA Can’t Analyze
But the most shocking fact in this study is that, although nearly 70 percent of all Gardasil reaction reports were filed by Merck, a whopping 89 percent of the reports Merck did file were so incomplete there was not enough information for health officials to do a proper follow-up and review of what happened to the girls who fell unconscious or had convulsions, developed blood clots or inflammation of the brain and nerves, including Guillain Barre syndrome that causes paralysis, or those who suddenly developed serious autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and more.
There were 32 reports of Gardasil-related deaths between 2006 and the end of 2008 but only 20 of these death reports had enough information to be followed up. There are now a total of 43 deaths that have been reported. How many of those Gardasil related deaths cannot be evaluated because of incomplete information?
1986 Law Requires Reporting of Vaccine Injuries & Deaths
This is an outrage. Under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, it is a federal legal requirement for any person – a doctor, nurse or any person who gives a vaccination in America – to file a report with the federal government whenever a vaccination is followed by a bad health outcome, especially a hospitalization, injury or death. Vaccine providers are NOT supposed to be notifying the vaccine manufacturer – which clearly is like flushing the vaccine reaction report down the toilet – they are supposed to be notifying the government. And health officials at the FDA and CDC are supposed to be analyzing each and every report of a serious vaccine injury or death.
Massive Underreporting of Vaccine Bad Outcomes
FDA and CDC officials admit that there is underreporting of vaccine-related bad health outcomes. In fact, some studies say that less than 10 percent or even less than 1 percent of serious vaccine adverse events are ever reported.
Closed Government Databases Used to Deny Vaccine Risks
But health officials are quick to downplay the significance of this. They tell us not to worry because the closed government databases, which the CDC operates with vaccine manufacturers and HMO’s they pay to participate in them, can be relied upon to reassure us that all those seizures and blood clots and cases of brain inflammation, paralysis, lupus and deaths in girls who get Gardasil shots are really – mostly - just a coincidence.
In 2005, the National Vaccine Information Center and other parent groups called on the CDC and FDA to open up those closed government vaccine monitoring databases to public scrutiny.
So far, most of that vaccine reaction data is still hidden from public view so it can’t be independently verified.
Will H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Risks Be Hidden From Public?
If the government can let vaccine manufacturers fast track Gardasil vaccine but can’t compel the drug company that makes the vaccine or doctors giving the vaccine - who are shielded from liability - to report each and every death and serious injury that follows vaccination, why should we believe anything government health officials tell us about the safety of vaccines?
Why should we believe that the experimental swine flu vaccines being fast tracked with only a few weeks of study in healthy children and adults are going to be safe and that all vaccine reactions will be reported to the government and then properly followed up?
No Way To Monitor H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Side Effects In Schools
It is far more likely that, when children get swine flu vaccine in schools and then get really sick or even die like the Gardasil girls, that all those bad health outcomes will be written off as a coincidence by health officials. That is, IF any reports are made to the government at all! Because few school nurses or other people giving children swine flu vaccines in the schools will be taking medical histories; or have a way to record vaccine information in children’s medical records, much less monitor children for signs of a vaccine reaction and then file a reaction report to the government.
This is not the way to run a national vaccine program. This is not what we expect from doctors in positions of authority who have accepted responsibility for protecting our individual health or the health of our nation.
Doctors & Drug Companies Shielded From Liability Ignoring the Law
In the early 1980’s, parents of DPT vaccine injured children worked very hard on getting informing, recording and reporting safety provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. We wanted to make sure everything was being done to help prevent vaccine injuries and deaths. Little did we know then that those safety provisions would be blown off by doctors and vaccine manufacturers shielded from liability in that law.
The federal vaccine safety provisions should be codified into every state vaccine law with legal sanctions for doctors and drug companies who fail to file a complete vaccine reaction report.
What Public Health Emergency?
And now, today, we have swine flu vaccines that are being rushed to market with even less testing that the fast tracked Gardasil vaccine had, with the justification that there is a public health emergency. What public health emergency?
As everyone knows by now, the swine flu is no more serious than the garden variety influenza that goes around every year. Just like everyone knows by now that most cervical cancer can be prevented with regular Pap screening and that the very expensive HPV vaccine is questionable at best.
Why are we letting employees working for government agencies and pharmaceutical companies stampede us into taking vaccines that may not be necessary, safe or effective and – certainly - are not properly monitored for safety after they are given to tens of millions of children and adults?
It is time to demand that government officials and drug companies stop conducting national vaccine experiments on the American people.
Come To Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination
If you want to learn more about vaccines and how to be a vaccine safety and informed consent advocate in your community, come to the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination being held October 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to http://www.nvic.org/.
Watch the video bellow:
Swine Flu Vaccine Should Not Be Given to Children in Schools
by Barbara Loe Fisher
On April 26, a national public health emergency was declared by officials in the U.S. Departments of Health and Homeland Security. We were told it was necessary to declare a national emergency because people were getting sick from a new swine flu virus that began in Mexico and might cause a deadly influenza pandemic. So far, the vast majority of people who get sick with swine flu have symptoms that are no worse than the regular flu and recover completely.
Three Week Testing of Swine Flu Vaccines
The declaration of a national public health emergency last spring set a chain of events in motion: some schools were closed, some people were quarantined and drug companies were given billons of tax dollars to create experimental swine flu vaccines. These new vaccines are being fast tracked by the FDA. We are being told they will only be tested for a few weeks on a few hundred children and adults before being given to children in schools in October.
Liability Protection for Vaccine Injuries & Deaths
Under federal legislation passed by Congress since 2001, an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) allows drug companies, health officials and anyone who gives experimental vaccines to Americans during a declared public health emergency, to be protected from liability if people get hurt.
Safety and Informed Consent At Risk in Schools
The National Vaccine Information Center has been a vaccine safety watchdog since 1982. We are questioning the need to turn schools into medical clinics this fall where swine flu vaccines being rushed to market will be given to children first. We are calling on the Obama Administration and state Governors to provide solid evidence to parents that it is necessary to give children experimental swine flu vaccines in schools.
Are the states prepared to obey vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which include:
1. Giving parents written information about vaccine benefits and risks before children are vaccinated;
2. Keeping a record of which vaccines the children get, including the manufacturer’s name and lot number;
3. Recording which vaccines were given in the child’s medical record;
4. Recording serious health problems that develop after vaccination in the child’s medical record and immediately making a report to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
Will States Compensate Vaccine Injured Children?
And there are more questions that need to be answered: Are the states prepared to provide financial compensation to children harmed by swine flu vaccines given in schools? Are parents going to be given complete, truthful information about swine flu vaccine risks and have the right to say “YES” or “NO” before their children are lined up and vaccinated in the school setting?
Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry a risk of injury or death and those risks are greater for some than others. 1 in 6 children in America is learning disabled. 1 in 9 has asthma 1 in 150 develops autism. 1 in 450 has diabetes and millions more suffer with allergies and autoimmune disorders. Will the swine flu vaccine be safe for them?
Although it is a good idea for health officials to prepare for a worst case scenario and stockpile vaccines, it is a bad idea to turn schools into medical clinics and basically test experimental swine flu vaccines on children first. Especially when nobody has any liability. That has the potential to hurt children instead of keeping them well.
NVIC Oct. 2-4 Conference Addresses Vaccine Risks
This Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C., parents concerned about the lack of vaccine safety and informed consent protections in the vaccination system will gather with doctors, scientists, bioethicists, legal experts, journalists, and consumer advocates at the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination to talk about the science, policy, law and ethics of vaccination.
Register now – Special Early Bird registration ends on July 31.
Click here for more information about swine flu, swine flu vaccines, public health laws that govern you and you family, and how you can be better prepared to make well informed decisions during the declared national public health emergency.
For live links to references for this commentary and to watch a video, click here:
On April 26, a national public health emergency was declared by officials in the U.S. Departments of Health and Homeland Security. We were told it was necessary to declare a national emergency because people were getting sick from a new swine flu virus that began in Mexico and might cause a deadly influenza pandemic. So far, the vast majority of people who get sick with swine flu have symptoms that are no worse than the regular flu and recover completely.
Three Week Testing of Swine Flu Vaccines
The declaration of a national public health emergency last spring set a chain of events in motion: some schools were closed, some people were quarantined and drug companies were given billons of tax dollars to create experimental swine flu vaccines. These new vaccines are being fast tracked by the FDA. We are being told they will only be tested for a few weeks on a few hundred children and adults before being given to children in schools in October.
Liability Protection for Vaccine Injuries & Deaths
Under federal legislation passed by Congress since 2001, an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) allows drug companies, health officials and anyone who gives experimental vaccines to Americans during a declared public health emergency, to be protected from liability if people get hurt.
Safety and Informed Consent At Risk in Schools
The National Vaccine Information Center has been a vaccine safety watchdog since 1982. We are questioning the need to turn schools into medical clinics this fall where swine flu vaccines being rushed to market will be given to children first. We are calling on the Obama Administration and state Governors to provide solid evidence to parents that it is necessary to give children experimental swine flu vaccines in schools.
Are the states prepared to obey vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which include:
1. Giving parents written information about vaccine benefits and risks before children are vaccinated;
2. Keeping a record of which vaccines the children get, including the manufacturer’s name and lot number;
3. Recording which vaccines were given in the child’s medical record;
4. Recording serious health problems that develop after vaccination in the child’s medical record and immediately making a report to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
Will States Compensate Vaccine Injured Children?
And there are more questions that need to be answered: Are the states prepared to provide financial compensation to children harmed by swine flu vaccines given in schools? Are parents going to be given complete, truthful information about swine flu vaccine risks and have the right to say “YES” or “NO” before their children are lined up and vaccinated in the school setting?
Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry a risk of injury or death and those risks are greater for some than others. 1 in 6 children in America is learning disabled. 1 in 9 has asthma 1 in 150 develops autism. 1 in 450 has diabetes and millions more suffer with allergies and autoimmune disorders. Will the swine flu vaccine be safe for them?
Although it is a good idea for health officials to prepare for a worst case scenario and stockpile vaccines, it is a bad idea to turn schools into medical clinics and basically test experimental swine flu vaccines on children first. Especially when nobody has any liability. That has the potential to hurt children instead of keeping them well.
NVIC Oct. 2-4 Conference Addresses Vaccine Risks
This Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C., parents concerned about the lack of vaccine safety and informed consent protections in the vaccination system will gather with doctors, scientists, bioethicists, legal experts, journalists, and consumer advocates at the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination to talk about the science, policy, law and ethics of vaccination.
Register now – Special Early Bird registration ends on July 31.
Click here for more information about swine flu, swine flu vaccines, public health laws that govern you and you family, and how you can be better prepared to make well informed decisions during the declared national public health emergency.
For live links to references for this commentary and to watch a video, click here:
Preventing Gardasil Vaccine Injuries & Deaths
by Barbara Loe Fisher
She is just 16: the intelligent, lively pretty girl from Kansas, who was a high school gymnast and cheerleader and got straight A’s until, in 2008, three Gardasil shots changed her life and she became one more Gardasil reaction statistic. Today, Gabrielle never knows when she will be back in the hospital emergency room. Diagnosed with inflammation in the brain and body, the brain seizures won’t stop. She has had strokes. The right side of her body is weakened. She is in almost constant pain. Gabi has developed lupus now. Her doctor says she could die.
Fast-Tracked Vaccine
Gardasil vaccine was fast tracked to licensure by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006. It contains genetically engineered virus-like protein particles (VLPs) and aluminum, which affect immune function. The exact mechanism of protection is unknown and the vaccine has not been evaluated for the potential to cause cancer or be toxic to the genes.
It is a vaccine that, by the summer of 2009, already caused more than 15,000 thousand reports of vaccine reactions, including more than 3,000 injuries and 48 deaths. 14 of the girls who died after getting Gardasil were under age 16 just like Gabrielle.
At the National Vaccine Information, we issued our first press release in the summer of 2006 warning parents that Gardasil had not been adequately tested in young girls before government health officials recommended that all 11 and 12 year old girls get three doses of the vaccine.12 Merck only studied Gardasil in fewer than 1200 girls under age 16 and followed them up for about two years before lobbyists tried, unsuccessfully in 2007, to get the vaccine mandated for all sixth grade girls in every state.
Expanding Multi-Billion Dollar Market: Boys Are Next
Even though Gardasil was only tested on about a thousand young girls before licensure in 2006, CDC officials told doctors to give three doses of the vaccine to millions of little girls at a cost averaging $165 per dose. Because Merck did not test Gardasil in pre-licensure clinical trials in combination with all other vaccines routinely given to pre-teen and teenage girls, the CDC suggested that safety could be assumed and directed that Gardasil be given simultaneously with other vaccines.
Now Merck is asking the FDA to license Gardasil for young boys,16 an action that will expand Merck’s market by tens of millions of dollars. In 2008, the global sales from Gardasil topped $2 billion dollars.
HPV Virus Naturally Cleared From Bodies of Most People
But what is Gardasil vaccine supposed to protect our children against? It is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted virus called HPV. Most people, who have been sexually active, have been exposed to HPV and clear the virus from their bodies within two years without any problems and are left with permanent, lifelong immunity to the HPV strains that caused infection.
The small minority of women, who do not clear the HPV virus, can develop cervical cancer and die IF they do not get regular Pap test screening and immediate treatment of pre-cancerous cervical lesions.
Routine Pap Screening Prevents Cervical Cancer & Death
After routine Pap tests became a standard part of health care for American women in the 1960’s, deaths from cervical cancer dropped by more than 70 percent. In fact, cervical cancer represents less than two percent of all cancers diagnosed in the U.S. every year and is not among the top ten causes of cancer deaths in American women today. About 11,000 American women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year and about 4,000 women die. Plus Merck, government officials and doctors do not know how long three shots of Gardasil will protect against HPV infection. The vaccine only contains several of the many HPV strains associated with cervical cancer and hasn’t been on the market long enough to know how well it works.
Unknown If Gardasil Prevents HPV Infection Long-Term
In fact, girls are still supposed to get Pap tests even if they have been vaccinated because nobody really knows if Gardasil will prevent HPV infection for a long time without booster shots.
So here’s the bottom line: Gardasil vaccine is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted infection that is naturally cleared from the body within two years by the vast majority of people. Getting regular Pap tests can help prevent almost all cases of cervical cancer and death.
Treating Gabrielle’s serious Gardasil vaccine injury has cost her family and insurance company tens of thousands of dollars.
Most Vaccine Reactions Not Reported
How many more Gabrielle’s are out there? We don’t know, even though there have been many similar Gardasil reaction reports from doctors and parents in the U.S. and other countries like Spain and Australia.
Fewer than 10 percent, perhaps only one percent of all serious health problems following vaccination are ever reported to U.S. federal health agencies. This means that - instead of the more than 15,000 bad health outcomes following Gardasil vaccination that have already been reported in America – actually there could have been between 150,000 and 1.5 million adverse health events following Gardasil shots which have never been counted.
Government & Doctors Say: “It’s All A Coincidence!”
Why? Because many doctors write off Gardasil related hospitalizations, injuries and deaths as just a “coincidence” and do not report. Labeling bad things that happen after vaccination as a “coincidence” minimizes the risks of vaccination. Officials at the CDC and FDA have dismissed what happened to Gabrielle after she got her Gardasil shots as a coincidence.
In fact, they have only admitted that Gardasil can cause a sudden loss of consciousness and warn that “FDA and the CDC continue to receive reports of traumatic injuries of individuals fainting and falling after receiving Gardasil. Some who have fainted have had serious injuries from falling, which have often occurred while still in the healthcare provider’s office, and other fainting episodes resulted in motor vehicle accidents.” (This fact makes it dangerous for girls to drive alone to and from doctor’s offices where Gardasil shots are given).
But government health officials have told doctors and the American public that ALL of the other serious Gardasil reaction reports, including seizures, paralysis, brain inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, heart attacks, blood clots, strokes and deaths in young girls and women, are just a coincidence.
All of them.
How unscientific, illogical and irresponsible. We expect a lot more from doctors in charge of making sure vaccines are safe.
What if all of the injuries and deaths associated with Vioxx had been allowed to be written off as a “coincidence” after that dangerous drug had been on the market for years?
Pharmaceutical Products Carry Risks Greater for Some
Every pharmaceutical product, including every vaccine, carries a risk of injury or death. That risk can be greater for some than others.At the not-for-profit National Vaccine Information Center, we have been operating a Vaccine Reaction Registry for nearly three decades.
The most tragic cases of vaccine injury we see are when doctors revaccinate babies, children, teenagers and adults over and over again and ignore the fact that symptoms are getting worse and worse after each dose of vaccine.
Know Gardasil Reaction Symptoms
It is so important to know how to recognize Gardasil vaccine reaction symptoms like:
fainting
seizures
numbness & tingling
pain & weakness
hair loss
rashes
extreme fatigue
other health problems
Report Vaccine Reactions to NVIC
If you or a loved one has suffered a health problem after a Gardasil shot or another vaccine, after a report has been made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), go to http://www.nvic.org/Forms/CivilianReactionPage.aspx and file a report. We won’t dismiss your report as just a coincidence. We will treat it seriously and with the respect it deserves.
On the NVIC website, you can sign learn more about HPV and Gardasil Vaccine. You can sign the “Investigate Gardasil Risks Now” petition to Congress and the Obama Administration. You can sign up for this NVIC Vaccine E-newsletter and register for the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination being held this Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C., where you can learn from vaccine experts and network with other families in your state to protect vaccine choices.
Empower yourself with information and take action now so we can stop girls like Gabrielle from becoming one more vaccine reaction statistic.
For live links to original sources for references, go to:
http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/July-2009/Preventing-Gardasil-Vaccine-Injuries-Deaths.aspx
She is just 16: the intelligent, lively pretty girl from Kansas, who was a high school gymnast and cheerleader and got straight A’s until, in 2008, three Gardasil shots changed her life and she became one more Gardasil reaction statistic. Today, Gabrielle never knows when she will be back in the hospital emergency room. Diagnosed with inflammation in the brain and body, the brain seizures won’t stop. She has had strokes. The right side of her body is weakened. She is in almost constant pain. Gabi has developed lupus now. Her doctor says she could die.
Fast-Tracked Vaccine
Gardasil vaccine was fast tracked to licensure by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006. It contains genetically engineered virus-like protein particles (VLPs) and aluminum, which affect immune function. The exact mechanism of protection is unknown and the vaccine has not been evaluated for the potential to cause cancer or be toxic to the genes.
It is a vaccine that, by the summer of 2009, already caused more than 15,000 thousand reports of vaccine reactions, including more than 3,000 injuries and 48 deaths. 14 of the girls who died after getting Gardasil were under age 16 just like Gabrielle.
At the National Vaccine Information, we issued our first press release in the summer of 2006 warning parents that Gardasil had not been adequately tested in young girls before government health officials recommended that all 11 and 12 year old girls get three doses of the vaccine.12 Merck only studied Gardasil in fewer than 1200 girls under age 16 and followed them up for about two years before lobbyists tried, unsuccessfully in 2007, to get the vaccine mandated for all sixth grade girls in every state.
Expanding Multi-Billion Dollar Market: Boys Are Next
Even though Gardasil was only tested on about a thousand young girls before licensure in 2006, CDC officials told doctors to give three doses of the vaccine to millions of little girls at a cost averaging $165 per dose. Because Merck did not test Gardasil in pre-licensure clinical trials in combination with all other vaccines routinely given to pre-teen and teenage girls, the CDC suggested that safety could be assumed and directed that Gardasil be given simultaneously with other vaccines.
Now Merck is asking the FDA to license Gardasil for young boys,16 an action that will expand Merck’s market by tens of millions of dollars. In 2008, the global sales from Gardasil topped $2 billion dollars.
HPV Virus Naturally Cleared From Bodies of Most People
But what is Gardasil vaccine supposed to protect our children against? It is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted virus called HPV. Most people, who have been sexually active, have been exposed to HPV and clear the virus from their bodies within two years without any problems and are left with permanent, lifelong immunity to the HPV strains that caused infection.
The small minority of women, who do not clear the HPV virus, can develop cervical cancer and die IF they do not get regular Pap test screening and immediate treatment of pre-cancerous cervical lesions.
Routine Pap Screening Prevents Cervical Cancer & Death
After routine Pap tests became a standard part of health care for American women in the 1960’s, deaths from cervical cancer dropped by more than 70 percent. In fact, cervical cancer represents less than two percent of all cancers diagnosed in the U.S. every year and is not among the top ten causes of cancer deaths in American women today. About 11,000 American women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year and about 4,000 women die. Plus Merck, government officials and doctors do not know how long three shots of Gardasil will protect against HPV infection. The vaccine only contains several of the many HPV strains associated with cervical cancer and hasn’t been on the market long enough to know how well it works.
Unknown If Gardasil Prevents HPV Infection Long-Term
In fact, girls are still supposed to get Pap tests even if they have been vaccinated because nobody really knows if Gardasil will prevent HPV infection for a long time without booster shots.
So here’s the bottom line: Gardasil vaccine is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted infection that is naturally cleared from the body within two years by the vast majority of people. Getting regular Pap tests can help prevent almost all cases of cervical cancer and death.
Treating Gabrielle’s serious Gardasil vaccine injury has cost her family and insurance company tens of thousands of dollars.
Most Vaccine Reactions Not Reported
How many more Gabrielle’s are out there? We don’t know, even though there have been many similar Gardasil reaction reports from doctors and parents in the U.S. and other countries like Spain and Australia.
Fewer than 10 percent, perhaps only one percent of all serious health problems following vaccination are ever reported to U.S. federal health agencies. This means that - instead of the more than 15,000 bad health outcomes following Gardasil vaccination that have already been reported in America – actually there could have been between 150,000 and 1.5 million adverse health events following Gardasil shots which have never been counted.
Government & Doctors Say: “It’s All A Coincidence!”
Why? Because many doctors write off Gardasil related hospitalizations, injuries and deaths as just a “coincidence” and do not report. Labeling bad things that happen after vaccination as a “coincidence” minimizes the risks of vaccination. Officials at the CDC and FDA have dismissed what happened to Gabrielle after she got her Gardasil shots as a coincidence.
In fact, they have only admitted that Gardasil can cause a sudden loss of consciousness and warn that “FDA and the CDC continue to receive reports of traumatic injuries of individuals fainting and falling after receiving Gardasil. Some who have fainted have had serious injuries from falling, which have often occurred while still in the healthcare provider’s office, and other fainting episodes resulted in motor vehicle accidents.” (This fact makes it dangerous for girls to drive alone to and from doctor’s offices where Gardasil shots are given).
But government health officials have told doctors and the American public that ALL of the other serious Gardasil reaction reports, including seizures, paralysis, brain inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, heart attacks, blood clots, strokes and deaths in young girls and women, are just a coincidence.
All of them.
How unscientific, illogical and irresponsible. We expect a lot more from doctors in charge of making sure vaccines are safe.
What if all of the injuries and deaths associated with Vioxx had been allowed to be written off as a “coincidence” after that dangerous drug had been on the market for years?
Pharmaceutical Products Carry Risks Greater for Some
Every pharmaceutical product, including every vaccine, carries a risk of injury or death. That risk can be greater for some than others.At the not-for-profit National Vaccine Information Center, we have been operating a Vaccine Reaction Registry for nearly three decades.
The most tragic cases of vaccine injury we see are when doctors revaccinate babies, children, teenagers and adults over and over again and ignore the fact that symptoms are getting worse and worse after each dose of vaccine.
Know Gardasil Reaction Symptoms
It is so important to know how to recognize Gardasil vaccine reaction symptoms like:
fainting
seizures
numbness & tingling
pain & weakness
hair loss
rashes
extreme fatigue
other health problems
Report Vaccine Reactions to NVIC
If you or a loved one has suffered a health problem after a Gardasil shot or another vaccine, after a report has been made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), go to http://www.nvic.org/Forms/CivilianReactionPage.aspx and file a report. We won’t dismiss your report as just a coincidence. We will treat it seriously and with the respect it deserves.
On the NVIC website, you can sign learn more about HPV and Gardasil Vaccine. You can sign the “Investigate Gardasil Risks Now” petition to Congress and the Obama Administration. You can sign up for this NVIC Vaccine E-newsletter and register for the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination being held this Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C., where you can learn from vaccine experts and network with other families in your state to protect vaccine choices.
Empower yourself with information and take action now so we can stop girls like Gabrielle from becoming one more vaccine reaction statistic.
For live links to original sources for references, go to:
http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/July-2009/Preventing-Gardasil-Vaccine-Injuries-Deaths.aspx
Swine Flu Vaccine: Will We Have A Choice?
by Barbara Loe Fisher
The summer will be over before we know it and it will be time for the school year to begin. This fall, many parents are wondering what will happen to their children when they enter the schools. Some public health doctors want to turn schools into vaccination clinics where children will be the first to be injected with experimental swine flu vaccines.
Less Than 50,000 Swine Flu Cases Worldwide
Every day we are being warned by doctors at the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to worry a lot about the H1N1 influenza A virus, which was first identified in Mexico in April 2009 and is being called the new swine flu. As of June 15, 2009, the World Health Organization states that 76 countries have reported more than 35,000 cases, including 163 deaths. 108 of those deaths have occurred in Mexico.
We are being told that nearly 18,000 Americans have gotten sick from the new swine flu virus, with about 5 percent being hospitalized and 45 dying. It looks like people, who are in poor health to begin with are at greater risk of having complications and dying from the new swine flu, which has symptoms just like regular influenza. This is not surprising because people in poor health are always at greater risk of having complications and dying from infectious disease.
Most Flu-Like Illness Not True Influenza
What a lot of people don’t know is that true type A or type B influenza only causes about 20 percent of all flu-like symptoms that people experience during any given flu season. 80 percent of all flu-like illness in a normal flu season is NOT caused by the type A and B strains of influenza contained in annual flu shots. And vaccine acquired immunity is temporary, while immunity gained after recovering from influenza is longer lasting.
1968 Flu Pandemic Killed 34,000 Americans
The new type A H1N1 influenza virus public health doctors say is making people sick around the world is an unusual combination of human, bird and pig viruses9. Nobody seems to know exactly how this new virus was created and why it suddenly emerged from Mexico in mid-April - or if it will behave like past pandemic influenza viruses that caused 68,000 American deaths in 1957 and killed 34,000 Americans in 196810. (The CDC states that 36,000 Americans die from influenza complications annually, with most of those deaths occurring in the elderly and those in poor health). Influenza pandemics usually start with mild symptoms and progress to more severe symptoms before populations acquire immunity to the virus and it dies out.
Older Americans May Have Antibodies Against Swine Flu
The good news about the new swine flu going around is that there are signs those of us born before 1957, may be naturally protected and at LOWER risk of being infected. Why? Because we recovered from influenza caused by similar influenza strains that circulated in past decades and have long lasting antibodies that help us resist infection. So the aging baby boomers have something to be happy about.
Vaccinated Children Don’t Have Natural Antibodies
But will health officials allow our children and grandchildren to get those same kind of natural protective antibodies to type A and B influenza, including this new swine flu? It doesn’t look like it. First, doctors in America have been insisting for the past few years that every child from six months old to age 18 must get an annual flu shot. Second, there are now calls by U.S. health officials to give American children the first doses of experimental swine flu vaccines in the school setting.
WHO Declares Phase 6 Alert; Public Health Doctors Exercise EUA
This is because the response by doctors at the World Health Organization, who immediately went into high gear within days of identifying the new swine flu virus emerging out of Mexico, was to declare a public health emergency. Now, they have increased the pandemic flu fear alert to Phase 6, which is the equivalent of the U.S. Homeland Security’s Code Red warning of an imminent terrorist attack. Doctors at the Centers for Disease Control, who followed the lead of the World Health Organization, have done the same and are exercising unprecedented power that Congress handed over to them after 9-11.
Fast Tracking of Experimental Vaccines With Novel Adjuvants
Whenever the CDC declares a public health emergency, that declaration allows the Food and Drug Administration to permit emergency use authorization for drug companies to fast track creation of experimental drugs and vaccines that do not have to be tested as thoroughly as vaccines that go through the normal FDA licensing process. In this case, Congress responded to the public health emergency declaration by giving a group of drug companies one billion dollarsto fast track experimental swine flu vaccines that may include whole live19, killed or genetically engineered human and animal influenza viruses, chemicals, and potentially reactive oil based adjuvants that manipulate the immune system to boost the vaccine’s potency.
States Enact Stronger Quarantine & No Free Assembly Laws
In some states, like Massachusetts, public health doctors have persuaded legislators to quickly pass pandemic influenza legislation that will allow state officials to enter the homes and businesses without the approval of occupants; to investigate and quarantine individuals without their consent; to require licensed health care providers to give citizens vaccines and to ban the free assembly of citizens in the state.
What Can You Do?
What does this declaration of a public health emergency in the U.S. mean for you and your family? It means that, right now, you need to become educated about vaccination, influenza, vaccine risks, and the public health laws in your state. You need to find out what your rights and options are under new public health laws that may require you and your children to get vaccinated or be quarantined.
Take Action Now
Go to www.NVIC.org and learn more. Register now to attend the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C. and help organize in your state to protect your right to informed consent to vaccination. Call and write the state legislators you elected to make public health laws that govern you and your family. Make your voice heard.
Homeland Security, Department of Defense & CDC
As Department of Homeland Security officials are declaring that any disease outbreak is a matter of homeland security as Department of Defense officials are defining public demonstrations as “low level terrorism;” as CDC officials make plans to re-route airplanes to designated airports with quarantine centers to screen all passengers for signs of swine flu; and as fast tracked experimental pandemic flu vaccines are being created to be given to American children first, it is time for all of us – whether we are public health officials addressing what we believe is a true public health emergency or whether we are ordinary citizens simply trying to protect our health and the health of our children - to act in rational and responsible ways.
Protect Health Choices
Every pharmaceutical drug, including vaccines, carries a risk and those risks are greater for some than others. In this time of fear, we cannot let that fear take away our freedom to make voluntary health choices, including vaccine choices, so we have the power to make sure that the cure is not more dangerous than the disease.
For live links to references for this commentary and to watch a video, click here:
The summer will be over before we know it and it will be time for the school year to begin. This fall, many parents are wondering what will happen to their children when they enter the schools. Some public health doctors want to turn schools into vaccination clinics where children will be the first to be injected with experimental swine flu vaccines.
Less Than 50,000 Swine Flu Cases Worldwide
Every day we are being warned by doctors at the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to worry a lot about the H1N1 influenza A virus, which was first identified in Mexico in April 2009 and is being called the new swine flu. As of June 15, 2009, the World Health Organization states that 76 countries have reported more than 35,000 cases, including 163 deaths. 108 of those deaths have occurred in Mexico.
We are being told that nearly 18,000 Americans have gotten sick from the new swine flu virus, with about 5 percent being hospitalized and 45 dying. It looks like people, who are in poor health to begin with are at greater risk of having complications and dying from the new swine flu, which has symptoms just like regular influenza. This is not surprising because people in poor health are always at greater risk of having complications and dying from infectious disease.
Most Flu-Like Illness Not True Influenza
What a lot of people don’t know is that true type A or type B influenza only causes about 20 percent of all flu-like symptoms that people experience during any given flu season. 80 percent of all flu-like illness in a normal flu season is NOT caused by the type A and B strains of influenza contained in annual flu shots. And vaccine acquired immunity is temporary, while immunity gained after recovering from influenza is longer lasting.
1968 Flu Pandemic Killed 34,000 Americans
The new type A H1N1 influenza virus public health doctors say is making people sick around the world is an unusual combination of human, bird and pig viruses9. Nobody seems to know exactly how this new virus was created and why it suddenly emerged from Mexico in mid-April - or if it will behave like past pandemic influenza viruses that caused 68,000 American deaths in 1957 and killed 34,000 Americans in 196810. (The CDC states that 36,000 Americans die from influenza complications annually, with most of those deaths occurring in the elderly and those in poor health). Influenza pandemics usually start with mild symptoms and progress to more severe symptoms before populations acquire immunity to the virus and it dies out.
Older Americans May Have Antibodies Against Swine Flu
The good news about the new swine flu going around is that there are signs those of us born before 1957, may be naturally protected and at LOWER risk of being infected. Why? Because we recovered from influenza caused by similar influenza strains that circulated in past decades and have long lasting antibodies that help us resist infection. So the aging baby boomers have something to be happy about.
Vaccinated Children Don’t Have Natural Antibodies
But will health officials allow our children and grandchildren to get those same kind of natural protective antibodies to type A and B influenza, including this new swine flu? It doesn’t look like it. First, doctors in America have been insisting for the past few years that every child from six months old to age 18 must get an annual flu shot. Second, there are now calls by U.S. health officials to give American children the first doses of experimental swine flu vaccines in the school setting.
WHO Declares Phase 6 Alert; Public Health Doctors Exercise EUA
This is because the response by doctors at the World Health Organization, who immediately went into high gear within days of identifying the new swine flu virus emerging out of Mexico, was to declare a public health emergency. Now, they have increased the pandemic flu fear alert to Phase 6, which is the equivalent of the U.S. Homeland Security’s Code Red warning of an imminent terrorist attack. Doctors at the Centers for Disease Control, who followed the lead of the World Health Organization, have done the same and are exercising unprecedented power that Congress handed over to them after 9-11.
Fast Tracking of Experimental Vaccines With Novel Adjuvants
Whenever the CDC declares a public health emergency, that declaration allows the Food and Drug Administration to permit emergency use authorization for drug companies to fast track creation of experimental drugs and vaccines that do not have to be tested as thoroughly as vaccines that go through the normal FDA licensing process. In this case, Congress responded to the public health emergency declaration by giving a group of drug companies one billion dollarsto fast track experimental swine flu vaccines that may include whole live19, killed or genetically engineered human and animal influenza viruses, chemicals, and potentially reactive oil based adjuvants that manipulate the immune system to boost the vaccine’s potency.
States Enact Stronger Quarantine & No Free Assembly Laws
In some states, like Massachusetts, public health doctors have persuaded legislators to quickly pass pandemic influenza legislation that will allow state officials to enter the homes and businesses without the approval of occupants; to investigate and quarantine individuals without their consent; to require licensed health care providers to give citizens vaccines and to ban the free assembly of citizens in the state.
What Can You Do?
What does this declaration of a public health emergency in the U.S. mean for you and your family? It means that, right now, you need to become educated about vaccination, influenza, vaccine risks, and the public health laws in your state. You need to find out what your rights and options are under new public health laws that may require you and your children to get vaccinated or be quarantined.
Take Action Now
Go to www.NVIC.org and learn more. Register now to attend the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination Oct. 2-4, 2009 in Washington, D.C. and help organize in your state to protect your right to informed consent to vaccination. Call and write the state legislators you elected to make public health laws that govern you and your family. Make your voice heard.
Homeland Security, Department of Defense & CDC
As Department of Homeland Security officials are declaring that any disease outbreak is a matter of homeland security as Department of Defense officials are defining public demonstrations as “low level terrorism;” as CDC officials make plans to re-route airplanes to designated airports with quarantine centers to screen all passengers for signs of swine flu; and as fast tracked experimental pandemic flu vaccines are being created to be given to American children first, it is time for all of us – whether we are public health officials addressing what we believe is a true public health emergency or whether we are ordinary citizens simply trying to protect our health and the health of our children - to act in rational and responsible ways.
Protect Health Choices
Every pharmaceutical drug, including vaccines, carries a risk and those risks are greater for some than others. In this time of fear, we cannot let that fear take away our freedom to make voluntary health choices, including vaccine choices, so we have the power to make sure that the cure is not more dangerous than the disease.
For live links to references for this commentary and to watch a video, click here:
NY Rally & Grassroots Action Defending Vaccine Choice
by Barbara Loe Fisher
As government-employed doctors and attorneys, along with drug company lobbyists, move to persuade legislators to deny citizens the legal right to make voluntary vaccine decisions, families in different states are working hard to raise public awareness about the need to protect the legal right to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination. Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 2 at 10:30 a.m., parents will rally at the Legislative Office Building in Albany, New York to protest proposed new vaccine mandates and support legislation protecting religious exemption and widening medical exemption. They are voicing opposition to a bill that would mandate HPV (Gardasil) vaccine for sixth graders and one that would allow state-designated vaccine providers to give children hepatitis B shots without the informed consent of their parents.
New York Rally for Vaccine Choice
Parent groups in New York have been working since the 1980's and 90's to protect vaccine exemptions. A New York high court ruled in 1987 that parents do not have to belong to an organized church or religion to receive a religious exemption to vaccination. However, that has not prevented New York state-appointed attorneys from grilling parents about their religious beliefs for the purpose of denying the religious exemption. For more information about the June 2 rally in Albany go to www.MyKidsMyChoice.com
Washington, D.C. Parents Challenge Gardasil Use Law
In Washington, D.C., members of the Parents and Citizens Committee to Stop Medical Experimentation in D.C. , a citizen health action group founded in 2007, testified in an April 9 D.C. City Council meeting about the HPV vaccine mandate requiring sixth grade girls to get three doses of Gardasil vaccine. Although there is currently an opt-out provision in the law, parents and health advocates are protesting the lack of vaccine risk information given to girls and parents prior to vaccination and the lack of public awareness that girls can opt-out of the HPV vaccine mandate.
New Jersey Parents for Conscientious Belief Exemption
In neighboring New Jersey, parent groups have been working since the 1980's and 90's on legislation to protect the freedom to make voluntary vaccine decisions. For the past decade, the citizen action group, New Jersey Alliance for Information Choice in Vaccination Choice (NJAICV) has been educating legislators about the need to enact a conscientious belief exemption bill. A newly formed coalition of organizations supporting vaccine choice in New Jersey has added support to the citizen-led vaccine education campaigns in a state which mandates more vaccinations for children than any other state (35 doses of 13 vaccines).
West Virginia Parents in Court to Protect Vaccine Injured Child's Life
Parents living in West Viginia and Mississippi, the two states which allow only a medical exemption written by an M.D. or D.O., continue to suffer discrimination in their struggle to obtain the legal right to file vaccine exemptions for sincerely held religious, conscientious or philosophical beliefs. A citizen action group, West Virginians for Vaccination Exemption, has been working for 10 years to obtain a religious and/or conscientious belief exemption to vaccination. Parents in that state are now going to court to defend their religious beliefs regarding vaccination, with one mother trying to protect her daughter, who regressed into autism after vaccination, from being forced to get more vaccines that could further damage her brain and immune system.
Mississippi Creates Anti-Discrimination Petition
In Mississippi, a recently formed parent support network, the Mississippi Vaccine Information Center, is working on legislation to end discrimination against unvaccinated and partially vaccinated children, whose parents are denied the right to non-medical vaccine exemptions in that state. The group has created a petition that endorses informed consent to vaccination and the inclusion of a religious and philosophical exemption in Mississippi state vaccine laws.
Vaccine Laws Should Protect At-Risk Populations
Doctors working with drug company reps are aggressively lobbying elected officials to pass laws forcing one-size-fits-all vaccine mandates on all children - even those who may be biologically at higher risk than others for suffering vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction. Refusing to acknowledge biodiversity, doctors are clinging to the illogical and unscientific "coincidence" defense for the sole purpose of remaining in denial about vaccine risks. They are acting without conscience when they discriminate against and fail to protect individual children, particularly the already-vaccine injured, from further harm. Citizen activists working in states to insure that vaccine laws include respect for the informed consent principle are protecting both individual and public health.
NVIC's Oct. 2-4 Conference To Focus on Vaccine Choice
Speakers defending the human right to informed consent to vaccination will be featured at the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center October 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel (near Dulles Airport) in the Washington, D.C. area.
Scientists, pediatricians, bioethicists, legal experts, journalists and consumer advocates will be discussing the science, policy, law, and ethics of vaccination and the conference will feature advocacy training sessions to help attendees educate their legislators about vaccination.
The conference forum is being created for families and health care providers who want to defend vaccine freedom of choice and work in their communities to protect vaccine exemptions. For more information and to register for best rates before June 30, click here.
Click here to watch a video about NVIC's October Conference.
Click here to watch a video of 11-year old music prodigy Sam Debold, who is recovering from vaccine-associated regressive autism, playing the piano at Autism One. Sam is the son of NVIC's Director of Patient Safety, Vicky Debold, PhD, and Sam will be performing again in October at the banquet at NVIC's conference.
NVIC's October 2009 Vaccine Conference: It's About Informed Choices
by Barbara Loe Fisher
As many parents head for the Autism One conference in Chicago next week to learn how to heal their children's vaccine-related brain and immune system dysfunction and worldwide anxiety about the swine flu lingers, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is opening registration for the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination to be held Oct. 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Reston, Virginia near Dulles International Airport and Washington, D.C. The largest and oldest non-profit vaccine safety organization in North America, founded in 1982, is sponsoring the event to provide a public forum for open discussion about vaccine issues of concern to parents and health care professionals. The conference theme "Show Us the Science & Give Us A Choice" reflects NVIC's three decade pro- education and pro-informed consent stand defending the right of citizens to make fully informed, voluntary vaccine decisions for themselves and their children.
More than 35 speakers from the U.S. and traveling from Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Kenya will speak about the science, policy, law and economics of vaccination; the human right to informed consent to vaccination; as well as holistic health care options for preventing illness and staying well. Pre-conference state organizing sessions start Thursday evening, Oct. 1, and Friday and Sunday advocacy training, holistic health education and vaccine injury family networking sessions precede a post-conference Monday, Oct. 5 bus trip to Capitol Hill.
Friday, Oct. 2 Highlights: Peggy O'Mara, founder & editor of Mothering Magazine and Jane Bryant, founder & editor of the UK internet news service, One Click, start the first day with a discussion about freedom of the press. The keynote address will be delivered by renowned bioethicist George Annas, JD, MPH, Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health. HPV vaccine researcher Professor Diane Harper, MD, MPH of the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Medicine, will examine informed consent issues involving Gardasil vaccine. Evidence for influenza vaccine efficacy will be reviewed by Italian epidemiologist and physician Tom Jefferson, MD, Cochrane Vaccines Field Coordinator.
Coming all the way from Kenya is cell biologist and vaccine researcher Bonnie Dunbar, PhD, who co- founded the Africa Biomedical Center, to inform the audience about the multi-disciplinary approach to meeting unique health challenges in Africa. She is joined by Canadian pediatrician Colin Forbes, MD, who will recount his more than 40 years of experience caring for children in Kenya and how he helped reduce child mortality in some of the most impoverished child populations in the world.
Returning briefly from a health research position in Japan, MIT doctoral candidate Peter Doshi will outline the impact on democracy of U.S. and global vaccine policies. Human rights activist Shiv Chopra, B.V.Sc., M.Sc., PhD, who was former scientific advisor to Health Canada, and is author of "Rotten to the Core" will give a presentation entitled "Public Health or Corporate Interests?"
During what promises to be an historic conference, pediatrician Bob Sears, M.D. offers an alternative schedule for use of 16 U.S. government recommended vaccines and will debate pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky, M.D., who presents an alternative view of how to maintain health and prevent chronic illness. Holistic health pioneers Joe Mercola, DO and Gary Null, PhD will talk about how good nutrition and understanding how to make healthy life choices is the key to staying well, while holistic veterinarian and immunologist, Richard Pitcairn, DVM, PhD, will teach the audience about how good nutrition and homeopathy can keep pets well and Life University Professor Matthew McCoy, DC, MPH will give a chiropractic perspective on informed consent to vaccination.
"Will the Law Protect Health Freedom?" is the question that constitutional and federal law experts, along with leading medical privacy and health freedom advocates will discuss. Vaccine injury and product liability law will be the topic explored by attorneys, who have won vaccine injury cases in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and also have expertise in vaccine contamination and use of experimental vaccines in soldiers. Longtime vaccine choice lobbyists like PROVE President Dawn Richardson will join longtime autism activists M.I.N.D. Institute co-founder Rick Rollens and Unlocking Autism President Shelley Reynolds and others to help parents organize to educate legislators and protect the right to make informed vaccine choices.
During the past few years, there have been calls for elimination or severe restrictions of vaccine exemptions by doctors with ties to the vaccine industry and by government health officials seeking a 100 percent vaccination rate with all government recommended and mandated vaccines. NVIC has long taken a public stand for the basic human right to protect bodily integrity and the October conference provides a public forum not only for those, who want the freedom to make voluntary choices about using pharmaceutical products and medical interventions that carry known and unknown risks, but also for scientists, doctors, journalists and health safety advocates to present information and defend their right and responsibility to investigate and speak about improving vaccine science and policies to protect individual and public health.
The conference is supported by an educational grant from the Albert and Claire Dwoskin Family Foundation, which has made it possible for NVIC to keep the registration fee for those registering by August 30 at $195 for the three day, three night conference featuring top speakers from around the world. There is a low $95 per night hotel rate, which is unheard of in the Washington, D.C. area for a fine hotel like the Hyatt Regency. Meeting and hotel room space is limited in the only hotel in the village of Reston. Conference registration and hotel room reservation is on a first come, first serve basis. For more information about speakers, sponsorship opportunities and registration, go to www.NVIC.org
As many parents head for the Autism One conference in Chicago next week to learn how to heal their children's vaccine-related brain and immune system dysfunction and worldwide anxiety about the swine flu lingers, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is opening registration for the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination to be held Oct. 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Reston, Virginia near Dulles International Airport and Washington, D.C. The largest and oldest non-profit vaccine safety organization in North America, founded in 1982, is sponsoring the event to provide a public forum for open discussion about vaccine issues of concern to parents and health care professionals. The conference theme "Show Us the Science & Give Us A Choice" reflects NVIC's three decade pro- education and pro-informed consent stand defending the right of citizens to make fully informed, voluntary vaccine decisions for themselves and their children.
More than 35 speakers from the U.S. and traveling from Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Kenya will speak about the science, policy, law and economics of vaccination; the human right to informed consent to vaccination; as well as holistic health care options for preventing illness and staying well. Pre-conference state organizing sessions start Thursday evening, Oct. 1, and Friday and Sunday advocacy training, holistic health education and vaccine injury family networking sessions precede a post-conference Monday, Oct. 5 bus trip to Capitol Hill.
Friday, Oct. 2 Highlights: Peggy O'Mara, founder & editor of Mothering Magazine and Jane Bryant, founder & editor of the UK internet news service, One Click, start the first day with a discussion about freedom of the press. The keynote address will be delivered by renowned bioethicist George Annas, JD, MPH, Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health. HPV vaccine researcher Professor Diane Harper, MD, MPH of the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Medicine, will examine informed consent issues involving Gardasil vaccine. Evidence for influenza vaccine efficacy will be reviewed by Italian epidemiologist and physician Tom Jefferson, MD, Cochrane Vaccines Field Coordinator.
Coming all the way from Kenya is cell biologist and vaccine researcher Bonnie Dunbar, PhD, who co- founded the Africa Biomedical Center, to inform the audience about the multi-disciplinary approach to meeting unique health challenges in Africa. She is joined by Canadian pediatrician Colin Forbes, MD, who will recount his more than 40 years of experience caring for children in Kenya and how he helped reduce child mortality in some of the most impoverished child populations in the world.
Returning briefly from a health research position in Japan, MIT doctoral candidate Peter Doshi will outline the impact on democracy of U.S. and global vaccine policies. Human rights activist Shiv Chopra, B.V.Sc., M.Sc., PhD, who was former scientific advisor to Health Canada, and is author of "Rotten to the Core" will give a presentation entitled "Public Health or Corporate Interests?"
During what promises to be an historic conference, pediatrician Bob Sears, M.D. offers an alternative schedule for use of 16 U.S. government recommended vaccines and will debate pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky, M.D., who presents an alternative view of how to maintain health and prevent chronic illness. Holistic health pioneers Joe Mercola, DO and Gary Null, PhD will talk about how good nutrition and understanding how to make healthy life choices is the key to staying well, while holistic veterinarian and immunologist, Richard Pitcairn, DVM, PhD, will teach the audience about how good nutrition and homeopathy can keep pets well and Life University Professor Matthew McCoy, DC, MPH will give a chiropractic perspective on informed consent to vaccination.
"Will the Law Protect Health Freedom?" is the question that constitutional and federal law experts, along with leading medical privacy and health freedom advocates will discuss. Vaccine injury and product liability law will be the topic explored by attorneys, who have won vaccine injury cases in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and also have expertise in vaccine contamination and use of experimental vaccines in soldiers. Longtime vaccine choice lobbyists like PROVE President Dawn Richardson will join longtime autism activists M.I.N.D. Institute co-founder Rick Rollens and Unlocking Autism President Shelley Reynolds and others to help parents organize to educate legislators and protect the right to make informed vaccine choices.
During the past few years, there have been calls for elimination or severe restrictions of vaccine exemptions by doctors with ties to the vaccine industry and by government health officials seeking a 100 percent vaccination rate with all government recommended and mandated vaccines. NVIC has long taken a public stand for the basic human right to protect bodily integrity and the October conference provides a public forum not only for those, who want the freedom to make voluntary choices about using pharmaceutical products and medical interventions that carry known and unknown risks, but also for scientists, doctors, journalists and health safety advocates to present information and defend their right and responsibility to investigate and speak about improving vaccine science and policies to protect individual and public health.
The conference is supported by an educational grant from the Albert and Claire Dwoskin Family Foundation, which has made it possible for NVIC to keep the registration fee for those registering by August 30 at $195 for the three day, three night conference featuring top speakers from around the world. There is a low $95 per night hotel rate, which is unheard of in the Washington, D.C. area for a fine hotel like the Hyatt Regency. Meeting and hotel room space is limited in the only hotel in the village of Reston. Conference registration and hotel room reservation is on a first come, first serve basis. For more information about speakers, sponsorship opportunities and registration, go to www.NVIC.org
Politics, Profits & Pandemic Fear Mongering
by Barbara Loe Fisher
Are you grabbing your face mask, stocking up on food and Tamiflu, locking your doors and keeping your TV tuned to the news to find out just how bad the "swine flu pandemic" really is going to get? While Americans are being scared to death, few are noticing how much of their tax money politicians are giving to drug companies and government health officials to grease the skids to create more experimental flu vaccines and drugs and more effective ways to quarantine or force their mass use whenever a "public health emergency" is declared in the future.
Call me cynical but not clueless. The bird's eye view I have had for the past 27 years at the National Vaccine Information Center has taught me one thing: the global alliance between Big Pharma and Big Public Health is a prescription for disaster that could extend far beyond a bout with the flu.
The international drama playing out right now before our eyes is an example of how citizens around the world can be easily manipulated by doctors and politicians engaging in fear mongering in the name of disease control to forward agendas that have more to do with ideology, power and corporate profits than health. When the U.S. Director of Homeland Security is the government official doing the talking rather than the U.S. Director of the Centers for Disease Control, put a copy of the U.S. Constitution in your pocket and take a look at federal and state legislation passed since September 11, 2001 to understand which civil rights you don't have anymore when government health officials declare a "public health emergency."
But before we take a look at the threat to civil liberties that pandemic fear mongering poses, let's take a look at how creation of a global human market for influenza vaccines works. It is a blueprint for Successful Marketing 101 (or perhaps it is all just a coincidence).
In 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an international call for all nations to do whatever it takes to increase public appetite and demand for annual influenza shots as the main strategy to prepare for an influenza pandemic. In April 2007, the WHO used money donated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to fund the creation of influenza vaccine manufacturing plants in Mexico and other countries one week after the FDA gave Sanofi Pasteur a license to produce an experimental bird flu (H5N1) vaccine. Sanofi Pasteur is just one of many drug companies the U.S. government has given millions of dollars to for the creation of bird flu vaccines.
On February 19, 2009, the FDA's Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) discussed whether to give approval for the testing of experimental bird flu vaccine on American infants. VRBPAC consumer member, also NVIC's Director of Patient Safety Vicky Debold,PhD, warned that testing of an experimental pandemic bird flu vaccine on infants in the absence of a real epidemic and without assurances that unapproved novel oil based (squalene) adjuvants (AS03, MF59) are safe, could pose unacceptable risks in terms of inducing severe immune dysfunction.
On February 27, 2009 it was confirmed that an influenza vaccine maker, Baxter International, had released a mixture of seasonal influenza viruses mixed with unlabeled live bird flu viruses to facilities in Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Slovenia. Baxter, which is waiting for a license to manufacturer bird flu vaccine, explained it was an "accident" and that no harm was done.
On April 23, 2009, the world heard the first news reports about a mysterious pig (H1N1) and bird (H5N1)and human hybrid influenza virus that was making people sick near a Mexican pig farm. By April 30, the WHO had issued a Phase 5 "Alert" warning that the world was facing an imminent pandemic influenza epidemic on the strength of several hundred cases of "swine" flu and less than 10 confirmed deaths.
The pandemic flu panic that has an especially strong grip on people living in Mexico and the U.S., thanks to the governments of both countries declaring a "public health emergency," has been a good thing for pharmaceutical companies in the pandemic flu business. Wall Street revealed that the pandemic scare sent stock prices soaring for drug companies making anti-viral drugs, rapid flu diagnosis tests and influenza vaccines. Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Novavax, Baxter, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, BioCryst, and Vical are among the drug companies likely to benefit from the world pandemic panic.
In all the chaos that has Americans running to drug stores to buy face masks, closing schools to wipe desks down with rubbing alcohol and avoiding public transportation, there is action being taken behind the scenes by politicians and government health officials to prepare the way for implementation of future quarantine and mass vaccination of citizens with experimental vaccines and drugs that have by- passed normal FDA regulations for demonstrating purity and potency of pharmaceutical products. A "public health emergency" has become an excuse to grease the skids and rush to market experimental drugs and vaccines that are not subject to product liability in the civil courts.
The creation of this pharmaceutical company stockholder dream scenario and simultaneous erosion of civil liberties in the name of disease control began in earnest in 21st century America after the tragic events on September 11, 2001. In a time defined by shock, fear, anger and deep sadness, Congress reacted quickly and passed the Homeland Security Act while CDC officials pulled out model state legislation (Model State Emergency Health Powers Act) that gave sweeping new powers to public health officials to use the militia, if necessary, to quarantine citizens and force them to use experimental drugs and vaccines after the U.S. Secretary of Health declares a "public health emergency."
The stampede in 2001/2002 to re-write long standing public health laws in this country was fueled by reports that terrorists were in possession of weaponized smallpox and anthrax, a fear that was fostered by U.S. government officials and New York Times journalists reporting Iraq had secret stockpiles of weaponized smallpox and anthrax. This myth played a role in public support for the U.S.-Iraq War and persuaded Congress to pass Bioshield and pandemic influenza vaccine legislation that gave billions of dollars to vaccine manufacturers, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to create experimental bioeterrorism and pandemic flu vaccines while protecting drug companies and doctors from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths that will occur.
The mandated, mass use of multiple vaccines has become big business in the last quarter century since the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1986 shielding vaccine makers and doctors from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths and the numbers of vaccines recommended by the federal health officials for American children multiplied from 23 doses of 7 vaccines to 48 doses of 14 vaccines from birth to age six. For older children and adults, there are several dozen more federally recommended or state mandated vaccinations.
All of this liability protection and government vaccine mandating has been a boon for vaccine profit- making and public health agency empire building. In 1986, four drug companies made and sold vaccines in America and, by 2007, after corporate mergers and acquisitions there were six drug company giants making and selling vaccines in the U.S. Today, there are more drug companies seeking to enter the lucrative multi- billion dollar U.S. vaccine market as financial predictions for global profits from the worldwide vaccine business by 2010 have climbed to more than $20B.
A true global influenza pandemic that could take out projected millions of people is something all nations should prepare for using reasonable strategies to ensure the public health and safety. However, it is a matter of legitimate debate as to whether the primary strategy being urged by the WHO, pharmaceutical companies and government health agencies around the world - ramping up production and use of seasonal influenza vaccine and fast tracking the creation and human testing of influenza vaccines using novel but potentially risky adjuvants and cell substrates - is the way to effectively deal with public health or a future influenza pandemic.
Certainly, the loss of the human right to bodily integrity and informed consent to taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that may pose serious health risks is not justified in the name of controlling pandemic influenza or any other infectious disease outbreak. Politicians should not bow to additional pressure from vaccine manufacturers and public health officials to by-pass normal FDA standards in proving safety and efficacy of pandemic flu vaccines and their components for the purpose of rushing them to market in response to the pandemic panic that has been created. The swine flu debacle of 1976 should have taught Congress that lesson.
A rational perspective that reduces pandemic fear and includes common sense advice for staying healthy in every season is being offered by holistic health doctors, such as Joseph Mercola, D.O. and physician Congressman Ron Paul, M.D. The next time you turn on the TV or the radio or search the internet for the latest news on the flu pandemic, take a deep breath and consider all the natural ways to stay healthy and resist influenza or any illness : washing your hands; eating nutritious food; drinking plenty of water; getting enough exercise, rest and sunshine, and lowering stress - which includes not walking around filled with fear, anxiety and dread.
Are you grabbing your face mask, stocking up on food and Tamiflu, locking your doors and keeping your TV tuned to the news to find out just how bad the "swine flu pandemic" really is going to get? While Americans are being scared to death, few are noticing how much of their tax money politicians are giving to drug companies and government health officials to grease the skids to create more experimental flu vaccines and drugs and more effective ways to quarantine or force their mass use whenever a "public health emergency" is declared in the future.
Call me cynical but not clueless. The bird's eye view I have had for the past 27 years at the National Vaccine Information Center has taught me one thing: the global alliance between Big Pharma and Big Public Health is a prescription for disaster that could extend far beyond a bout with the flu.
The international drama playing out right now before our eyes is an example of how citizens around the world can be easily manipulated by doctors and politicians engaging in fear mongering in the name of disease control to forward agendas that have more to do with ideology, power and corporate profits than health. When the U.S. Director of Homeland Security is the government official doing the talking rather than the U.S. Director of the Centers for Disease Control, put a copy of the U.S. Constitution in your pocket and take a look at federal and state legislation passed since September 11, 2001 to understand which civil rights you don't have anymore when government health officials declare a "public health emergency."
But before we take a look at the threat to civil liberties that pandemic fear mongering poses, let's take a look at how creation of a global human market for influenza vaccines works. It is a blueprint for Successful Marketing 101 (or perhaps it is all just a coincidence).
In 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an international call for all nations to do whatever it takes to increase public appetite and demand for annual influenza shots as the main strategy to prepare for an influenza pandemic. In April 2007, the WHO used money donated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to fund the creation of influenza vaccine manufacturing plants in Mexico and other countries one week after the FDA gave Sanofi Pasteur a license to produce an experimental bird flu (H5N1) vaccine. Sanofi Pasteur is just one of many drug companies the U.S. government has given millions of dollars to for the creation of bird flu vaccines.
On February 19, 2009, the FDA's Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) discussed whether to give approval for the testing of experimental bird flu vaccine on American infants. VRBPAC consumer member, also NVIC's Director of Patient Safety Vicky Debold,PhD, warned that testing of an experimental pandemic bird flu vaccine on infants in the absence of a real epidemic and without assurances that unapproved novel oil based (squalene) adjuvants (AS03, MF59) are safe, could pose unacceptable risks in terms of inducing severe immune dysfunction.
On February 27, 2009 it was confirmed that an influenza vaccine maker, Baxter International, had released a mixture of seasonal influenza viruses mixed with unlabeled live bird flu viruses to facilities in Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Slovenia. Baxter, which is waiting for a license to manufacturer bird flu vaccine, explained it was an "accident" and that no harm was done.
On April 23, 2009, the world heard the first news reports about a mysterious pig (H1N1) and bird (H5N1)and human hybrid influenza virus that was making people sick near a Mexican pig farm. By April 30, the WHO had issued a Phase 5 "Alert" warning that the world was facing an imminent pandemic influenza epidemic on the strength of several hundred cases of "swine" flu and less than 10 confirmed deaths.
The pandemic flu panic that has an especially strong grip on people living in Mexico and the U.S., thanks to the governments of both countries declaring a "public health emergency," has been a good thing for pharmaceutical companies in the pandemic flu business. Wall Street revealed that the pandemic scare sent stock prices soaring for drug companies making anti-viral drugs, rapid flu diagnosis tests and influenza vaccines. Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Novavax, Baxter, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, BioCryst, and Vical are among the drug companies likely to benefit from the world pandemic panic.
In all the chaos that has Americans running to drug stores to buy face masks, closing schools to wipe desks down with rubbing alcohol and avoiding public transportation, there is action being taken behind the scenes by politicians and government health officials to prepare the way for implementation of future quarantine and mass vaccination of citizens with experimental vaccines and drugs that have by- passed normal FDA regulations for demonstrating purity and potency of pharmaceutical products. A "public health emergency" has become an excuse to grease the skids and rush to market experimental drugs and vaccines that are not subject to product liability in the civil courts.
The creation of this pharmaceutical company stockholder dream scenario and simultaneous erosion of civil liberties in the name of disease control began in earnest in 21st century America after the tragic events on September 11, 2001. In a time defined by shock, fear, anger and deep sadness, Congress reacted quickly and passed the Homeland Security Act while CDC officials pulled out model state legislation (Model State Emergency Health Powers Act) that gave sweeping new powers to public health officials to use the militia, if necessary, to quarantine citizens and force them to use experimental drugs and vaccines after the U.S. Secretary of Health declares a "public health emergency."
The stampede in 2001/2002 to re-write long standing public health laws in this country was fueled by reports that terrorists were in possession of weaponized smallpox and anthrax, a fear that was fostered by U.S. government officials and New York Times journalists reporting Iraq had secret stockpiles of weaponized smallpox and anthrax. This myth played a role in public support for the U.S.-Iraq War and persuaded Congress to pass Bioshield and pandemic influenza vaccine legislation that gave billions of dollars to vaccine manufacturers, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to create experimental bioeterrorism and pandemic flu vaccines while protecting drug companies and doctors from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths that will occur.
The mandated, mass use of multiple vaccines has become big business in the last quarter century since the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1986 shielding vaccine makers and doctors from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths and the numbers of vaccines recommended by the federal health officials for American children multiplied from 23 doses of 7 vaccines to 48 doses of 14 vaccines from birth to age six. For older children and adults, there are several dozen more federally recommended or state mandated vaccinations.
All of this liability protection and government vaccine mandating has been a boon for vaccine profit- making and public health agency empire building. In 1986, four drug companies made and sold vaccines in America and, by 2007, after corporate mergers and acquisitions there were six drug company giants making and selling vaccines in the U.S. Today, there are more drug companies seeking to enter the lucrative multi- billion dollar U.S. vaccine market as financial predictions for global profits from the worldwide vaccine business by 2010 have climbed to more than $20B.
A true global influenza pandemic that could take out projected millions of people is something all nations should prepare for using reasonable strategies to ensure the public health and safety. However, it is a matter of legitimate debate as to whether the primary strategy being urged by the WHO, pharmaceutical companies and government health agencies around the world - ramping up production and use of seasonal influenza vaccine and fast tracking the creation and human testing of influenza vaccines using novel but potentially risky adjuvants and cell substrates - is the way to effectively deal with public health or a future influenza pandemic.
Certainly, the loss of the human right to bodily integrity and informed consent to taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that may pose serious health risks is not justified in the name of controlling pandemic influenza or any other infectious disease outbreak. Politicians should not bow to additional pressure from vaccine manufacturers and public health officials to by-pass normal FDA standards in proving safety and efficacy of pandemic flu vaccines and their components for the purpose of rushing them to market in response to the pandemic panic that has been created. The swine flu debacle of 1976 should have taught Congress that lesson.
A rational perspective that reduces pandemic fear and includes common sense advice for staying healthy in every season is being offered by holistic health doctors, such as Joseph Mercola, D.O. and physician Congressman Ron Paul, M.D. The next time you turn on the TV or the radio or search the internet for the latest news on the flu pandemic, take a deep breath and consider all the natural ways to stay healthy and resist influenza or any illness : washing your hands; eating nutritious food; drinking plenty of water; getting enough exercise, rest and sunshine, and lowering stress - which includes not walking around filled with fear, anxiety and dread.
Doctor-Heroes Standing For Better Vaccine Science
by Barbara Loe Fisher
The cry that was heard around the world in the early 1980's, when mothers and fathers realized an old, crude pertussis vaccine was killing and damaging the brains of their children, is being echoed today by new generations of parents struggling to raise vaccine injured children. As in the 1980's, mothers and fathers today are forced to watch doctors hold the needles, pull the trigger and then turn their faces away when children are cut down at the beginning of their lives.
Over the decades, we have seen a handful of doctors demonstrate intellectual honesty and rare courage by standing up publicly to acknowledge that vaccine injuries and deaths are real and that more scientific research is needed to fill the gaps in knowledge about why and how vaccines cause harm. Despite criticism and even threats from colleagues to remain silent, these doctor-heroes have chosen commitment to good science and respect for human life to take precedence over protection of the status quo.
On April 3, 2009 on CNN's "Larry King Live," the only woman to have served as director of the National Institute for Health, Bernadine Healy, M.D., firmly countered allegations that scientific research into the vaccine-autism connection should be ended because science has proven "vaccines do not cause autism." Politely disagreeing with Margaret Fisher, M.D., a pediatrician spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and pediatric neurologist Max Wiznitzer, M.D., who testified against compensation for vaccine injured autistic children in the U.S. Court of Claims, Healy said "I really don't believe that this is a closed case from a research point of view."
She said that doctors must "listen to the families of these [autistic] children" because when doctors "listen to the patients the patients will teach." She added that there is an "embarrassing recognition that we know so little about [autism] in terms of what causes it, in terms of how to treat it" and she called for a "comparison of children who have and have not been vaccinated."
As I watched Bernadine Healy, M.D., mother of three, former director of the Red Cross and member of the Institute of Medicine, eloquently argue for good science, common sense, compassion, and cooperation, I remembered the brave physicians in decades past who chose to speak out at critical moments in the history of the vaccine safety and informed consent movement. They include physicians no longer with us such as the late pediatrician Robert Mendelson, M.D.; pediatrician and immunologist Kevin Geraghty, M.D.; and pediatric neurologist John Menkes, M.D., and those still working to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths such as pediatric neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne, M.D., pediatrician Bob Sears, M.D., pediatrician Larry Palevsky, M.D., pediatrician Jay Gordon, M.D., family practice physician Joseph Mercola, D.O., gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, M.D., and others like pediatrician Jerry Kartzinel, M.D., who appeared on Friday's Larry King Live show with father and actor Jim Carrey; mother, actress and autism activist Jenny McCarthy; and father and Generation Rescue founder JB Handley, to shine a bright light on vaccine associated regressive autism.
In every generation there are heroes in positions of power, who listen to their conscience and demonstrate uncommon courage by refusing to look the other way while people are being harmed. They are different from the rest because they engage in critical, independent thinking and are not afraid to do the right thing.
On Friday night, Dr. Bernadine Healy single handedly re-instilled faith in many parents that the time honored Hippocratic oath for physicians to "First, Do No Harm" is still alive and embraced by compassionate, enlightened doctors like her. Undoubtedly, there are more doctors wanting to do the right thing when it comes to standing up, speaking out and taking action to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths. When they do, they will join the distinguished ranks of physician heroes who will be remembered and honored for caring about children for whom the risks of vaccination are 100 percent.
Go to http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPT S/0904/03/lkl.01.html to read the CNN transcript of the April 3 "Larry King Live" show, which includes the following quotes:
"I made a deal with God, the day Evan was diagnosed with autism, I said if you show me the way, God, and show me how to heal my boy, I will continue to teach the world how I did it. And within one year of that kind of conversation with God, Evan was undiagnosed with autism.....autism is treatable and preventable." - Jenny McCarthy
"The AAP is financed by the drug companies.... This is a huge business. Vaccines are the largest growing division of the pharmaceutical industry: $13 billion. What we're asking is for them to take a loss for the good of our children." - Jim Carrey
"The American Academy of Pediatrics listens very closely before a vaccine is recommended for use. It goes through extensive trials. It goes through extensive information. All of that information is reviewed very quickly. It's both efficacy and safety information. There's never a rubber stamp. We work very closely before, while the vaccine is being tested to see if it works, it is safe? And only if it's been determined to be safe and effective is it recommended for use. It's not a rubber stamp." - Margaret Fisher, M.D.
"When I was training in medical school I saw one child with autism and they said, Dr. Kartzinel, now, come look quick, here's a child with autism and you'll never see it again....it was very rare....I was just doing general pediatrics and after my son regressed after the mumps, measles and rubella and my wife said, you broke them now you fix them, that's when I started saying, OK, what can I do?" - Jerry Kartzinel, M.D.
"It's going to be shocking for parents to learn that the CDC and AAP don't actually acknowledge that there's been a real rise in autism cases....the Department of Education in 1992 said 16,000 kids were getting autism services. Today - 225,000. That means in 1992 they were missing 93 percent of kids with autism. Where are all the adults with autism? They don't exist. These numbers are real. But if you never acknowledge there's been a real rise, you don't have to find an environmental agent that caused it." - JB Handley
"Initially the complaint was Mercury. That was disproven. Then the complaint was MMR. That was disproven. Now we've got a new moving target, which is that the combined vaccines all together that do this. We can only spend our research money so far before we basically say, let's put it where we know for sure we can help, and not just on speculative ideas. Studies have been done .... and they've shown that issues such as diagnostic substitution, which means they had previous diagnosis, that we have loosening of the diagnostic criteria.... When you change the rules of how you make diagnosis, and that to some degree has happened, people are loosening up. Kids with social issues are being labeled as autistic. The majority -- I think we can account for at least 80 percent of the increased prevalence with those numbers." - Max Wiznitzer, M.D.
The cry that was heard around the world in the early 1980's, when mothers and fathers realized an old, crude pertussis vaccine was killing and damaging the brains of their children, is being echoed today by new generations of parents struggling to raise vaccine injured children. As in the 1980's, mothers and fathers today are forced to watch doctors hold the needles, pull the trigger and then turn their faces away when children are cut down at the beginning of their lives.
Over the decades, we have seen a handful of doctors demonstrate intellectual honesty and rare courage by standing up publicly to acknowledge that vaccine injuries and deaths are real and that more scientific research is needed to fill the gaps in knowledge about why and how vaccines cause harm. Despite criticism and even threats from colleagues to remain silent, these doctor-heroes have chosen commitment to good science and respect for human life to take precedence over protection of the status quo.
On April 3, 2009 on CNN's "Larry King Live," the only woman to have served as director of the National Institute for Health, Bernadine Healy, M.D., firmly countered allegations that scientific research into the vaccine-autism connection should be ended because science has proven "vaccines do not cause autism." Politely disagreeing with Margaret Fisher, M.D., a pediatrician spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and pediatric neurologist Max Wiznitzer, M.D., who testified against compensation for vaccine injured autistic children in the U.S. Court of Claims, Healy said "I really don't believe that this is a closed case from a research point of view."
She said that doctors must "listen to the families of these [autistic] children" because when doctors "listen to the patients the patients will teach." She added that there is an "embarrassing recognition that we know so little about [autism] in terms of what causes it, in terms of how to treat it" and she called for a "comparison of children who have and have not been vaccinated."
As I watched Bernadine Healy, M.D., mother of three, former director of the Red Cross and member of the Institute of Medicine, eloquently argue for good science, common sense, compassion, and cooperation, I remembered the brave physicians in decades past who chose to speak out at critical moments in the history of the vaccine safety and informed consent movement. They include physicians no longer with us such as the late pediatrician Robert Mendelson, M.D.; pediatrician and immunologist Kevin Geraghty, M.D.; and pediatric neurologist John Menkes, M.D., and those still working to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths such as pediatric neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne, M.D., pediatrician Bob Sears, M.D., pediatrician Larry Palevsky, M.D., pediatrician Jay Gordon, M.D., family practice physician Joseph Mercola, D.O., gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, M.D., and others like pediatrician Jerry Kartzinel, M.D., who appeared on Friday's Larry King Live show with father and actor Jim Carrey; mother, actress and autism activist Jenny McCarthy; and father and Generation Rescue founder JB Handley, to shine a bright light on vaccine associated regressive autism.
In every generation there are heroes in positions of power, who listen to their conscience and demonstrate uncommon courage by refusing to look the other way while people are being harmed. They are different from the rest because they engage in critical, independent thinking and are not afraid to do the right thing.
On Friday night, Dr. Bernadine Healy single handedly re-instilled faith in many parents that the time honored Hippocratic oath for physicians to "First, Do No Harm" is still alive and embraced by compassionate, enlightened doctors like her. Undoubtedly, there are more doctors wanting to do the right thing when it comes to standing up, speaking out and taking action to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths. When they do, they will join the distinguished ranks of physician heroes who will be remembered and honored for caring about children for whom the risks of vaccination are 100 percent.
Go to http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPT S/0904/03/lkl.01.html to read the CNN transcript of the April 3 "Larry King Live" show, which includes the following quotes:
"I made a deal with God, the day Evan was diagnosed with autism, I said if you show me the way, God, and show me how to heal my boy, I will continue to teach the world how I did it. And within one year of that kind of conversation with God, Evan was undiagnosed with autism.....autism is treatable and preventable." - Jenny McCarthy
"The AAP is financed by the drug companies.... This is a huge business. Vaccines are the largest growing division of the pharmaceutical industry: $13 billion. What we're asking is for them to take a loss for the good of our children." - Jim Carrey
"The American Academy of Pediatrics listens very closely before a vaccine is recommended for use. It goes through extensive trials. It goes through extensive information. All of that information is reviewed very quickly. It's both efficacy and safety information. There's never a rubber stamp. We work very closely before, while the vaccine is being tested to see if it works, it is safe? And only if it's been determined to be safe and effective is it recommended for use. It's not a rubber stamp." - Margaret Fisher, M.D.
"When I was training in medical school I saw one child with autism and they said, Dr. Kartzinel, now, come look quick, here's a child with autism and you'll never see it again....it was very rare....I was just doing general pediatrics and after my son regressed after the mumps, measles and rubella and my wife said, you broke them now you fix them, that's when I started saying, OK, what can I do?" - Jerry Kartzinel, M.D.
"It's going to be shocking for parents to learn that the CDC and AAP don't actually acknowledge that there's been a real rise in autism cases....the Department of Education in 1992 said 16,000 kids were getting autism services. Today - 225,000. That means in 1992 they were missing 93 percent of kids with autism. Where are all the adults with autism? They don't exist. These numbers are real. But if you never acknowledge there's been a real rise, you don't have to find an environmental agent that caused it." - JB Handley
"Initially the complaint was Mercury. That was disproven. Then the complaint was MMR. That was disproven. Now we've got a new moving target, which is that the combined vaccines all together that do this. We can only spend our research money so far before we basically say, let's put it where we know for sure we can help, and not just on speculative ideas. Studies have been done .... and they've shown that issues such as diagnostic substitution, which means they had previous diagnosis, that we have loosening of the diagnostic criteria.... When you change the rules of how you make diagnosis, and that to some degree has happened, people are loosening up. Kids with social issues are being labeled as autistic. The majority -- I think we can account for at least 80 percent of the increased prevalence with those numbers." - Max Wiznitzer, M.D.